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^SHAKESPEARE'S 


TRAGEDY OF 


M A C B K r H 


AS PRODUCED BY 


EDWIN BOOTH. 


^V 


Adapted from the Text of the Cambridge Editors, with Introductory Remarks, &c.y 


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SHAKESPEARE'S 



-y' TRAGEDY OF 



/^ 



MACBETH 



AS PRODUCED BY 



EDWIN BOOTH 



Adapted from the Text of the Cambridge Editors, witli Introductory Remarks, v9*c.. 



By henry L. HINTON. 



NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY HURD & HOUGHTON, 
459 BROOME STREET. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, 
By henry L. HINTON, 
In the Clerk's Office of the Distrid Court of the United States for the 
Southern Distri(5t of New York. 



INTRODUCTION. 



No play has called forth a greater variety of opinions than Macbeth. 
It has been charaderized, on the one hand, ' as the grandest conception of 
human genius.' On the other, the learned Dr. Johnson says, 'it has no 
nice discriminations of charadler ;' he adds, ' a poet who should now 
make the whole adion of his drama depend on enchantment, and produce 
the chief events by the assistance of supernatural agents, would be cen- 
sured as transgressing the bounds of probability, and be banished from the 
theatre to the nursery.' Dr. Warburton vents himself on what he calls 
the ' extravagances ' of the witch scenes, but he condescendingly remarks 
that ' the play has had the power to charm and bewitch every audience 
from that to this time.' It is to more recent authors that we must look for 
a just estimate of this wonderful produdion. Coleridge, Schlegel, Hazliit, 
Gervinus, and other great critics have eulogized not only the force and 
intensity in the poetic elaboration, but the exquisite art in the construftion of 
this play. The remarks of these great masters are, however, too much extend- 
ed for quotation here. The following elegant extract from Grant White best 
serves our purpose as a condensed statement of the spirit of the piece : — 

* What the Sistine Madonna was to Raffael, it seem.s that Macbeth was 
to Shakespeare— a magnificent impromptu ; that kind of impromptu which 
results from the application of well-disciplined powers and rich stores of 
thought to a subje6l suggested by occasion. I am inclined to regard Mac- 
beth as, for the most part, a specimen of Shakespeare's unelaborated, if not 
unfinished, writings, in the maturity and highest vitality of his genius. It 
abounds in instances of extremest compression and most daring ellipses, while 
it exhibits in every scene a union of supreme dramatic and poetic power, 
and in almost every line an imperially irresponsible control of languiig:.' 

As regards the history of the play, it is positively ascertained that it was 
written between the years 1603 and 1610; probably 1605 was the year of 
its authorship and produdlion on the stage. Richard Burbadge has the honor 
of originally personating the hero, but no account of his acting in th's rd't 



iv INTRODUCTION. 

has been preserved. He was the most distinguished tragedian of his time, 
and from the amount of eulogy bestowed upon him by a people who must 
have had a line sense of what was great in the a6lor's art, we are inclined 
to think he has never been surpassed. 

In 1665 Sir William Davenant produced a new version o^ Macbeth , and 
from that day to this, more or less of his vile interpolations have been in- 
serted in the various ading editions of the play. What this version of 
Davenant's was, may be described in the words of Davies, who wrote nearly 
a century later: — ^ After Macbeth had been thrown aside, or negleded 
for some years. Sir William Davenant undertook to refine and reduce it, 
as near as possible, to the standard of the taste in vogue. He likewise 
brought it, as well as he could, to the resemblance of an opera. In the 
musical part he was assisted by Mr. Locke, an eminent master of music. 
It must be confessed, the songs of Hecate, and the other witches, have a 
solemn adaption to the beings for whom they were composed. Dances of 
furies were invented for the incantation scene in the fourth a6l, and near fifty 
years since I saw our best dancers employed in the exhibition of infernal 
spirits. Had Davenant stopped here, it had been well for his reputation, 
but this ill-instru£led admirer of Shakespeare altered the plan of the au- 
thor's design, and destroyed that peculiarity which distinguishes Macbeth 
from several of our author's pieces. The jingle of rhyme delighted the 
ears of our court critics, for no other reason, which I can discover, but 
because the plays of the French nation, and especially their tragedies, wore 
the chiming fetters ; but the dramatic poets of France knew that their 
language was too weak for blank verse, or for lines of twelve feet, without 
the assistance of rhyme, and therefore, what was mere necessity in them, 
the false judges of our language considered as an essential beauty.' The 
following extradl from the same writer will give the reader a knowledge of 
the advance made by Garrick toward a more faithful presentation of the 
play : * Happily for the lovers of Shakespeare, Mr. Garrick, some years 
before he was a patentee, broke through the fetters of foolish custom and 
arbitrary imposition : he restored Macbeth to the public almost in the 
same dress it was left us in, by the author. A scene or two, which 
were not conducive to the adlion, he threw out in representation ; others 
that were too long he judiciously pruned; very few additions were 
made, except in some passages of the play necessary to the better expla- 
nation of the writer's intention. He composed, indeed, a pretty long 
speech for Macbeth, when dying, which, though suitable perhaps to the 



INTRODUCTION. v 

character, was unlike Shakespeare's manner, who was not prodigal of be- 
stowing abundance of matter on charaders in that situation. But Garrick 
excelled in the expression of convulsive throes and dying agonies, and 
would not loose any opportunity that offered to show his skill in that part 
of his profession.' John Kemble, who was one of the greatest Macbeth* of 
these more modern times, had the good taste to omit Garrick's dying speech, 
and, we believe, it has since been rarely if ever introduced. But Davenant's 
mingling of Middleton's witches with those of Shakespeare's in this play, 
still, it is to be regretted, hold favor with most of our a6lors and managers. 

The charader of Macbeth has been less satisfadorily portrayed than, 
perhaps, any of our author's heroes. Davies, whom we have quoted above, 
in speaking of the distinguished a6lors of his time who essayed the role of 
Macbeth, says : — * Quin's figure and countenance, in this character, spoke 
much in his favor ; but he was deficient in animated utterance, and wanted 
flexibility of tone. He could neither assume the strong agitation of mind 
before the murder of the king, nor the remorse and anguish in consequence 
of it : much less could he put on that mixture of despair, rage, and frenzy, 
that mark the last scenes of Macbeth. During the whole representation 
he scarce ever deviated from a dull, heavy monotony. Mossop's power 
of expression, in several situations of Macbeth^ commanded attention and 
applause. Had he been acquainted with variety of adlion and easy deport- 
ment, he would have been justly admired in it. Barry ought never to have 
attempted that which was so opposite to his natural manner. He was not 
formed to represent the terrible agonies of Macbeth. The genius of a 
Garrick could alone comprehend and execute the complicated passions of 
this charadler. From the first scene, in which he was accosted by the 
witches, to the end of the part, he was animated and consistent. The 
tumult raised in his mind by the prophecy of the witches was expressed 
by feelings suitable to the occasion, nor did he suffer the marks of this 
agitation to be entirely dissipated in the presence of Duncan, which he 
discovered to the audience in no obscure manner; more especially when 
the king named Malcolm, Prince of Cumberland.' 

Of Garrick, and Mrs. Pritchard, as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in the 
murder scene in the second ad, the same writer remarks : — * The represen- 
tation of this terrible part of the play, by Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard, can 
no more be described than I believe it can be equaled. I will not sepa- 
rate these performers, for the merits of both were transcendent. His 
distradlion of mind and agonizing horrors were finely contrasted by her 



vi INTRODUCTION. 

seeming apathy, tranquillity, and confidence. The beginning of the scene 
after the murder, was condu6led in terrifying whispers. Their looks and 
adions supplied the place of words. You heard what they spoke, but you 
learned more from the agitation of mind displayed in their a61ions and de- 
portment. The poet here gives only an outline to the consummate actor : 
"I have done the deed!" '^ Didst thou not hear a noise?" '^When?" 
^' Did you not speak ?" The dark coloring, given by the aftor to these 
abrupt speeches, makes the scene awful and tremendous to the auditor ! 
The wonderful expression of heartful horror, which Garrick felt w^hen he 
showed his bloody hands, can only be conceived and described by those who 
saw him!' The banquet scene in the third acr, is the scene, perhaps, of all 
other where most Macbeths and Lady Macbeths fail. ' This admirable 
scene/ as Davies tells us, * was greatly supported by the speaking terrors of 
Garrick's look and aftion. Mrs. Pritchard showed admirable art in endeav- 
oring to hide Pvlacbeth's frenzy from the observation of the guests, by draw- 
ing their attention to conviviality. She smiled on one, w^hispered to another, 
and distantly saluted a third ; in short, she prafticed every possible artifice 
to hide the transadion that passed betv/een her husband and the vision his 
disturbed imagination had raised. Her reproving and angry looks, v/hich 
glanced toward Macbeth, at the same time were mixed with marks of 
inward vexation and uneasiness. When, at last, as if unable to support her 
feelings any longer, she rose from her seat, and seized his arm, and, with a 
half-whisper of terror, said — ** Are you a man 1" she assumed a look of such 
anger, indignation, and contempt, as can not be surpassed/ 

Notwithstanding all that Davies has said of Mrs. Pritchard's Lady Mac- 
beth, yet her successor, Mrs. Siddons, seems to have excited far greater en- 
thusiasm. *Mrs. Siddons,' as Doran tells us, * imagined the heroine of this 
most tragic of tragedies to be a delicate blonde, who ruled by her intelledl, 
and subdued by her beauty, but with whom no one feeling of common 
general nature was congenial ; a woman prompt for wickedness, but swiftly 
possessed by remorse ; one who is horror-stricken for herself and for the^ 
precious husband, who, more robust and less sensitive, plunges deeper into 
crime, and is less moved by any sense of compassion or sorrow.' 

Of the comparative excellencies of the chief impersonators since Gar- 
rick's time of the rdle of Macbeth, the following extrad from Mr. Gould's 
recent work. The Tragedian,* embodies a clearly denned estimate, evinc- 
ing a master hand in the difficult art of Shakespearean criticism : — 
* Published by Hurd & Houghton, 



INTR OD UCTION. vii 

' Mr. Booth filled this part. We had seen gracious performances, and 
heard musical readings of the text by other adors. They reported the 
charader. Booth was possessed by it. A captain in the service of his 
king, and returning from successful fight, in company with Banquo, he is 
met upon a blasted heath by the three witches. The preternatural gran- 
deur, and significant brevity, of their greeting, are usually lost upon the 
stage. And this, we contend, is owing quite as much to the incapacity of 
imagination on the part of the performer of Macbeth, as to the fantastical, 
half-comic aspe6l of the three old women. While they were speaking, 
Mn Booth betrayed his strong inward agitation ; and when they vanished 
(that is, clattered off the stage), he looked at them, then into the air, with a 
quick and wonder-struck transition, which volatilized their substance, and 
abolished their defe6l.' We must illustrate this scene by a comparison: — 

Banquo. " The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, 
And these are of them. Whither are they vanished ?" 

Macbeth, "Into the airj and what seemed corporal melted 
As breath into the wind." 

Mr. Vandenhoff, the elder, a gentleman whose readings from Shake- 
speare and other poets delighted large audiences in this country some 
twenty years since, had a voice singularly sweet and sonorous. We saw 
him adl Macbeth, or rather heard him read the part ; for his adlion was 
always secondary. His delivery of the passage quoted, was a marvel of 
descriptive intonation. He gave body and form to the impalpable air. 
You could almost see his breath in it. But he did not give the vanishing. 
Booth did. With a sudden upward look, and with a sudden springing 
tone, not musical, but like the whiz of a shaft from a cross-bow, he gave, 
*'into the air.'^ Could he dally with the image? No. Voice, look, 
adion, conveyed the instant thought, the vanishing. And the conclusion 
of the sentence came in the same style : — 

** And what seemed corporal " {looking at his ozun body)^ 
** Melted as breath into the ivind '* {short i ), 

with a succession of emphasis, swift, and filled with wonder. To assign 
the method of various adlors, we might say : Vandenhoff played the 
imagery ; Macready, the analysis ; Kean, the passion of the scene ; Booth, 
the charader, which not only includes the other methods, but supplies an 
element wanting in them. The speech beginning, " Two truths are told," 
drew upon that well-spring of imaginative expression, which lay deep in 
Booth's nature, and which Macbeth gave scope for, in a more condensed 



viii INTRODUCTION. 

and terrific way, than any other charader. The efFedl of the ^* supernatu- 
ral soHciting " was to kindle this quality into its highest life. No voice 
that we have ever heard or read of^ could convey like his, the embodied 
beauty or terror of supernatural emotions. The music of the ** imperial 
theme " was in his ears. He saw the throne in vision, but between him 
and it were darkness, fearfiil guilt, and '^horrible imaginings.'* 

** My thought, ivhose murder — yet — is but fantastical {^^with tone and gesture 
that Jjgured a hovering and 'vanishing shape)^ 

Shakes so my single state of man (w/M 'vibrant intensity)^ that fundtion 

Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is 

But what is not.** 
This phrase was uttered in one continuous tone of involved resonance, and 
in such a manner as to make the listener feel that the thronging shapes 
of Macbeth's roused and guilty imagination had displaced the world of 
objedlive realities. . . . During the alarm at the discovery of the mur- 
der of the king, Macbeth goes to Duncan's chamber and returns, siaying — 

"Had I but died an hour before this chance, 
I had lived a blessed time," etc. 

While delivering this speech, and the following one, wherein he justifies 
himself for the added murder of the grooms, an intelligent reporter for the 
press happened to enter the theatre. " That 's not good," he exclaimed. 
'^ What 's the matter with Booth to-night ?" Nothing was the matter, 
except that the ador had reached the height of the histrionic art, and was 
speaking Macbeth'sy^/j^ sentiments with pretended feeling. He delivered 
the forced imagery, in the affedled manner of a hired mourner, hired by 
'^ the common enemy of man," and paid — a crown. 

^Hazlitt says of Kean's Macbeth, that '^he was deficient in the poetry 
of the charadler ;" and that *^ he did not look like a man who had encoun- 
tered the Weird Sisters." How then, we may ask, could he play the part 
at all ? For, unless we are made to feel that the ador is possessed by 
visions of the mind, startled by voices in the air, waylaid, and drawn on 
to his confusion by those — 

" Secret, black, and midnight hags,'* 
it becomes of little account that he gives, as Kean did, one heart-rending 
pidure of remorse, after the commission of a murder. This might be 
done without representing Macbeth. Booth's performance, on the con- 
trary, was constituted by imagination, kindled and swayed by supernatural 
agencies 

' So close was Mr. Booth's identification of charader that its transpira- 



INTRODUCTION. ix 

tions were manifest, in minor and unconsidered ways. We may instance 
as contrasted examples the different modes of fighting and dying, in Rich- 
ard and in Macbeth. The circumstances are externally similar. In each 
play a brave and guilty king dies in single combat, either with the rightful 
heir to the throne, or his representative, after suffering a supernatural and 
prophetic visitation. But how different is the soul of the respedive 
scenes. In Richard, the vision of the night has passed like a forgotten 
dream. In the battle — 

" A thousand hearts are swelling in his bosom." 

His kingdom is still at stake. The hope of vi6lory lives in the fast em- 
brace of his enormous and tenacious will, and never leaves him till the last 
blow is struck. Accordingly, Booth as Richard, seemed — 

"Treble sinewed, hearted, breathed. 
And fought maliciously," 

while in Macbeth, he flung out voice and a6tion with the desperate aban- 
donment of a brave soldier, consciously meeting a preternatural doom.' 



COSTUME. 

Garrick dressed Macbeth as a complete modern Scottish sergeant-major, 
while Macklin donned a costume of a semi-military charader. Mrs. 
Pritchard, as Lady Macbeth, appeared in a ' court skirt over huge hoops, 
and a train tucked up to the waist, with powdered hair surmounted by a 
forest of feathers ;' and Mrs. Crouch personated one of the witches ' in a 
killing fancy hat, her hair superbly powdered, rouge laid on with delicate 
effedl, and her whole exquisite person enveloped in a cloud of point lace 
and fine linen.' Since such masquerade chara6lerizations are no longer 
endured, the question has arisen as to what is the proper costume for Mac- 
beth, Charles Knight, in his Shakespeare, offers a good argument on this 
much contested subjedl, of which the following is an abstra^l : — 

The rudely-sculptured monuments and crosses which time has spared 
upon the hills and heaths of Scotland, however interesting to the antiquary 
in other respe£ls, afford but very slender and uncertain information respect- 
ing the dress and arms of the Scotch Highlanders in the eleventh century ; 
and attempt how we will to decide from written documents, a hundred 
pens will instantly be flourished against us. Our own opinion, however, 
formed long ago, has, within these few years, been confirmed by that of 
1* 



X INrRODUCTION. 

the historian, W. F. Skene, who says : * it would be too much, perhaps, 
to affirm that the dress, as at present worn, in all its minute details, is 
ancient ; but it is very certain that it is compounded of three varieties in the 
form of dress, which were separately worn by the Highlanders in the 
seventeenth century, and that each of these may be traced back to the 
remotest antiquity.' These are : 1st, The belted plaid; 2d, The short 
coat or jacket; 3d, The truis. With each of these, or, at any rate, with 
the first two, was worn, from the earliest periods to the seventeenth century, 
the long-sleeved, saiFron-stained shirt, of Irish origin, called the Leni-croich. 
Nicolay d'Arfeville in 1583, says: * They wear, hke the Irish, a large 
full shirt, colored with saiFron, and over this a garment hanging to the 
knee, of thick wool, after the manner of a cassock (soutane). They go 
with bare heads, and allow their hair to grow very long, and they wear 
neither stockings nor shoes, except some who have buskins (botines) made 
in a very old fashion, v/hich come as high as the knees.' Lesley, in 1578, 
says : ' all, both nobles and common people, wore mantles of one sort 
(except that the nobles preferred those of different colors) ; these were 
long and flowing, but capable of being gathered up at pleasure into folds. 
The rest of their garments consisted of a shorty woolen jacket, with the 
sleeves open below, for the convenience of throwing their darts, and a cover- 
ing for the thighs of the simplest kind, more for decency than for show or 
defense against cold. They made also of linen very large shirts, with 
numerous folds and very large sleeves, which flowed loosely over their 
knees. These the rich colored with saffron, and others smeared with some 
grease, to preserve them longer clean among the toils and exercises of a 
camp, &c. Here we have the second variety — that of the short, woolen 
jacket with the open sleeves. The third variety is the truis, or trowse, 
* the breeches and stockings of one piece.' The truis has hitherto been traced 
in Scotland only as far back as the year 1538 ; and there are many who deny 
its having formed a portion of the more ancient Scottish dress : but inde- 
pendently that the document of the date above-mentioned recognizes it as 
an established ' Highland ' garment at the time, thereby giving one a 
right to infer its having long previously existed, the incontrovertible fa6l 
of a similar article of apparel having been worn by all the chiefs of the 
other tribes of the great Celtic or Gaelic family is sufficient, in our minds, to 
give probability to the belief that it was also worn by those of the ancient 
Scotch Highlanders. With regard to another hotly-disputed point of Scottish 
costume, the colors of the checkered cloth, commonly called tartan and plaid 



INTRODUCTION. xi 

(^neither of which names, however, originally signified its variegated appear- 
ance, the former being nearly the name of the woolen stuif of which it was 
made, and the latter that of the garment into which it was shaped), the 
most general behef is, that the distin6\ion of the clans by a particular 
pattern is of comparatively a recent date ; but those who deny ' a coat of 
many colors' to the ancient Scottish Highlanders altogether, must as un- 
ceremoniously strip the Celtic Briton or Belgic Gaul of his tunic, * flowered 
with various colors in divisions,' in which he has been specifically arrayed 
by Diodorus Siculus. In Major's time (1512) the plaids or cloaks of the 
higher classes alone were variegated. The common people appear to have 
worn them generally of a brown color, ^ most near,' says Moniepennie, * to the 
color of the hadder' (heather). Martin, in 1716, speaking of the female 
attire of the Western Isles, says the ancient dress, which is yet worn by 
some of the vulgar, called arisad, is a white plaid, having a few small stripes 
of black, blue, and red. Defoe, in his ^ Memoirs of a Cavalier,' describes 
the plaid worn in 1639 as * striped across, red and yellow,' and the portrait 
of Lacy, the adlor, painted in Charles II. 's time, represents him dressed for 
Sawney, the Scot, in a red, yellow, and black tunic and belted plaid, or, at 
any rate, in stuff of the natural yellowish tint of the wool, striped across with 
black and red. 

For the armor and weapons of the Scotch of the eleventh century v/e 
have rather more distinct authority. The sovereign and his Lowland chiefs 
appear early to have assumed the shirt of ring-mail of the Saxon ; or, per- 
haps, the quilted panzar of their Norwegian and Danish invaders ; hut 
that some of the Highland chieftains disdained such defense must be ad- 
mitted, from the well-known boast of the Earl of Strathearne, as late as 
1138, at the battle of the Standard : *I wear no armor,' exclaimed the 
heroic Gael, * yet those who do will pot advance beyond me this day.' 
It was indeed the old Celtic fashion for soldiers to divest themselves of al- 
most every portion of covering on the eve of combat, and to rush into 
battle nearly, if not entirely naked. 

The Scottish female habit seems to have consisted, hke that of the Saxon, 
Norman, and Danish women — nay, we may even add the ancient British — 
of a long robe, girdled round the waist, and a full and flowing mantle, 
fastened on the breast by a large buckle or brooch of brass, silver, or gold, 
and set with common crystals, or precious gems, according to the rank of 
the wearer. Dio describes Boadicea as wearing a variegated robe. 



DRAMATIS PERSONS 

Of this adaptation of Macbeth as cast for its first representation at Booth^s Theatre, 
New York, . 

Duncan, king of Scotland 

Malcolm, -i c 

DONALBAIN,/'''' '°"=--i 

Banquo, ' } S^^^'^^' °^ '^^ ^^^S^' ^'"^y- i .V.V.'. V.'.V* .,,. — 

Macduff, 

Lennox, 

Ross, 

Menteith, 

Angus, 

Caithness, 

Fleance, son to Banquo - 

SiWARD, earl of Northumberland, general of the English forces.- 

Young SiWARD, his son - 

Seyton, an officer attending on Macbeth - 

A Doftor A Messenger 

A Sergeant A Servant 

A Porter First Murderer 

An Old Man Second Murderer 

An Attendant 



noblemen of Scotland. ^ 



Lady Macbeth 

Gentlewoman attending on Lady Macbeth 

Hecate 

First Witch First Apparition.. . 

Second Witch '— Second Apparition. 

Third Witch Third Apparition . . 



Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldiers, Attendants, &c. 
Scene : Scotland : England, 



Note* — The asterisks that occasionally appear in the text refer to the glossary. 



THE TRAGEDY 



OF 



MACBETH. 

ACT I. 

Scene I. A desert place. 

Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches. 

First Witch. When shall we three meet again 
In thunder, lightning, or in rain ? 

Sec. Witch. When the hurlyburly's done, 
When the battle's lost and won. 

Third Witch. That will be ere the set of sun. 

First Witch. Where the place ? 

Sec. Witch. Upon the heath. 

Third Witch. There to meet with Macbeth. 

First Witch. I come, Graymalkin."^ 

All. Paddock"^ calls : — anon ! 
Fair is foul, and foul is fair. 
Hover through the fog and filthy air. \_Exeunt. 

Scene II. A camp near Forres. 

Alarum within. £w/<fr Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox, 
with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Sergeant. 
Dun. What bloody man is that ? He can report. 



14 MACBETH. [act i. 

As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt 
The newest state. 

MaL This is the sergeant^ 

Who like a good and hardy soldier fought 
'Gainst my captivity. Hail, brave friend ! 
Say to the king the knowledge of the broil 
As thou didst leave it. 

Ser. Doubtful it stood ; 

As two spent swimmers, that do cling together 
And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald— 
Worthy to be a rebel, for to that 
The multiplying villanies of nature 
Do swarm upon him — from the western isles 
Of kernes ^ and gallowglasses "^ is supplied ; 
And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiHng, 
Show'd like a rebel's drab : but all's too weak : 
For brave Macbeth — well he deserves that name — 
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel. 
Which smoked with bloody execution. 
Like valour's minion carved out his passage 
Till he faced the slave ; 

Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him. 
Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps, 
And iix'd his head upon our battlements. 

Dun. O valiant cousin ! worthy gentleman ! 

Ser. As whence the sun 'gins his reflexion 
Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break. 
So from that spring whence comfort seem'd to come 
Discomfort swells. Mark, king of Scotland, mark : 
No sooner justice had, with valour arm'd, 
Compell'd these skipping kernes to trust their heels. 
But the Norweyan lord, surveying vantage. 
With furbish'd arms and new supplies of men, 

* * Sergeants,* in ancient times, were not the petty officers now dist'ngulshed by that 
title J but men performing one kind of feudal military service, in rank next to esquires. 



SCENE II.] MACBETH. 15 

Began a fresh assault. 

Dun. Dismay'd not this 

Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo ? 

Ser. Yes ; 

As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion. 
If I say sooth, I must report they were 
As cannons overcharged with double cracks; 
So they 

Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe : 
Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds, 
Or memorize "^ another Golgotha, 
I cannot tell — 
But I am faint ; my gashes cry for help. 

Dun. So well thy words become thee as thy wounds ; 

They smack of honour both. Go get him surgeons. 

\_Extt Sergeant^ attended* 
Who comes here ? 

Mai. The worthy thane of Ross. 

Len. What a haste looks through his eyes ! So should he look 
That seems to speak strange things. 

Enter Ross. 

Ross. God save the king ! 

Dun. Whence camest thou, worthy thane ? 

Ross. P^rom Fife, great king ; 

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky 
And fan our people cold. 
Norway himself, with terrible numbers. 
Assisted by that most disloyal traitor 
The thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflicSl ; 
Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof, 
Confronted him with self-comparisons,^ 

^ * Bellona's bridegroom * is here undoubtedly Macbeth ; but Henley and Steevens, 
fancying that the God of War was meant, chuckle over Shakespeare's ignorance in not 
knowing that Mars was not the husband of Bellona. — * LappM in proof/ is, covered with 
armour of proof — By * him,* is meant * Norway,' and by * self-comparisons,' is meant 
that he gave him as good as he brought — showed that he was his e^ual. 



i6 MACBETH. [act i. 

Point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst arm, 
Curbing his lavish spirit : and, to conclude, 
The vicSlory fell on us. 

Dun. Great happiness ! 

Ross. That now 
Sweno, the Norways' king, craves composition ; 
Nor w^ould we deign him burial of his men 
Till he disbursed, at Saint Colme's inch. 
Ten thousand dollars to our general use. 

Dun, No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive 
Our bosom interest : go pronounce his present death, 
And with his former title greet Macbeth. 

Ross. I'll see it done. 

Dun. What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won. \_Exeunt. 



Scene III. J heath. 

Thunder. Enter the three Witches. 

First Witch. Where hast thou been, sister ? 

Sec. Witch. Killing swine. 

Third Witch. Sister, where thou ? 

First Witch. A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap. 
And mounch'd, and mounch'd, and mounch'd. ' Give me,' 

quoth I : 
' Aroint* thee, witch !' the rump-fed ronyon* cries. 
Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger : 
But in a sieve I'll thither sail, 
And like a rat without a tail, 
I '11 do, I '11 do, and I '11 do. 

Sec. Witch. I '11 give thee a wind. 

First Witch. Thou 'rt kind. 

Third Witch. And I another. 

First Witch. I myself have all the other ; 
And the very ports they blow. 



SCENE III.] MACBETH. 

All the quarters that they know 
r the shipman's card. 
I will drain him dry as hay : 
Sleep shall neither night nor day 
Hang upon his pent-house lid ; 
He shall live a man forbid : * 
Weary se'nnights nine times nine 
Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine : * 
Though his bark cannot be lost. 
Yet it shall be tempest-tost. 
Look what I have. 

Sec, Witch. Show me, show me. 

First Witch. Here I have a pilot's thumb, 
Wreck'd as homeward he did come. \Drum within. 

Third Witch, A drum, a drum ! 
Macbeth doth come. 

All, The weird sisters, hand in hand, 
Posters of the sea and land. 
Thus do go about, about : 
Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine. 
And thrice again, to make up nine. 
Peace ! the charm's wound up. 

Enter Macbeth and Banquo. 

Mach, So foul and fair a day I have not seen. 

Ban, How far is't call'd to Forres ? What are these 
So wither'd, and so wild in their attire. 
That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth, 
And yet are on't ? Live you? or are you aught 
That man may question ? You seem to understand me. 

By each at once her choppy finger laying 

% 

* The disease now known asmarasmusy was one of the evils most commonly attributed 
to witchcraft; because by the inferior pathological knowledge of the days when witches 
were believed in it could be attributed to no physiological cause. The witch was sup- 
posed to produce this effect by puncturing with needles or melting away a little waxen 
image of her intended victim. — White. 



1 8 MACBETH. [act i. 

Upon her skinny lips : you should be women, 
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret 
That you are so. 

Mach. Speak, if you can : what are you ? 

First Witch. All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee, thane of 
Glamis ! ^ 

Sec. Witch. All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee, thane of Cawdor ! 

Third Witch. All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter ! 

Ban. Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear 
Things that do sound so fair ? I' the name of truth, 
Are ye fantastical,"^ or that indeed 
Which outwardly ye show ? My noble partner 
You greet with present grace and great prediction 
Of noble having and of royal hope. 
That he seems rapt* withal : to me you speak not : 
If you can look into the seeds of time. 
And say which grain will grow and which will not, 
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear 
Your favours nor your hate. 

First Witch. Hail ! 

Sec. Witch. Hail ! 

Third Witch. Hail ! 

First Witch. Lesser than Macbeth, and greater. 

Sec. Witch. Not so happy, yet much happier. 

Third Witch. Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none : 
So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo ! 

First Witch. Banquo and Macbeth, all hail ! 

Mach. Stay, you imperfect: speakers, tell me more : 
By Sinel's death I know I am thane of Glamis ; 
But how of Cawdor ? the thane of Cawdor lives, 
A prosperous gentleman ;^and to be king 
Stands not within the prosped: of belief. 
No more than to be Cawdor. Say from whence 
You owe this strange intelligence ? or why 
Upon this blasted heath you stop our way 



SCENE III.] MACBETH. ig 

With such prophetic greeting ? Speak, I charge you. 

\_TVitches vanish. 

Ban. The earth hath bubbles as the water has. 
And these are of them : whither are they vanish'd ? 

Mach. Into the air, and what seem'd corporal melted 
As breath into the wind. Would they had stay'd ! 

Ban. Were such things here as we do speak about ? 
Or have we eaten on the insane* root 
That takes the reason prisoner ? 

Macb. Your children shall be kings. 

Ban. You shall be king. 

Mach. And thane of Cawdor too : went it not so ? 

Ban. To the selfsame tune and words. Who's here ? 

Enter Ross and Angus. 

B^oss. The king hath happily received, Macbeth, 
The news of thy success : and when he reads 
Thy personal venture in the rebels' fight. 
His wonders and his praises do contend 
Which should be thine or his : silenced with that. 
In viewing o'er the rest o' the selfsame day. 
He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks. 
Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make. 
Strange images of death. As thick as hail 
Came post with post, and every one did bear 
Thy praises in his kingdom's great defence, 
And pour'd them down before him. 

Ang. We are sent 

To give thee, from our royal master, thanks ; 
Only to herald thee into his sight. 
Not pay thee. 

Boss. And for an earnest of a greater honour, 
He bade me, from him, call thee thane of Cawdor : 
In which addition, hail, most worthy thane ! 
For it is thine. 



20 MACBETH. [act i. 

Ban. What, can the devil speak true ? 

Mach. The thane of Cawdor lives : why do you dress me 
In borrow'd robes ? 

Ang. Who was the thane lives yet, 

But under heavy judgement bears that life 
Which he deserves to lose. Whether he was combined 
With those of Norway, or did line the rebel 
With hidden help and vantage, or that with both 
He labour'd in his country's wreck, I know not ; 
But treasons capital, confess'd and proved. 
Have overthrown him. 

Mach. \^Aside\ Glamis, and thane of Cawdor : 

The greatest is behind. — Thanks for your pains. — 
Do you not hope your children shall be kings. 
When those that gave the thane of Cawdor to me 
Promised no less to them ? 

Ban. That, trusted home, 

Might yet enkindle ^ you unto the crown. 
Besides the thane of Cawdor. But 'tis strange : 
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm. 
The instruments of darkness tell us truths, 
Win us with honest trifles, to betray 's 
In deepest consequence. 
Cousins, a word, I pray you. 

Mach. \Aside^ Two truths are told, 

As happy prologues to the swelling a£l 
Of the imperial theme. — I thank you, gentlemen. 
\^Aside\ This supernatural soliciting 
Cannot be ill ; cannot be good : if ill. 
Why hath it given me earnest of success. 
Commencing in a truth ? I am thane of Cawdor : 
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion '^ 
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair 
And make my seated ^ heart knock at my ribs, 
Against the use of nature ? Present fears 



SCENE IV.] MACBETH. 21 

Are less than horrible imaginings : 

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, 

Shakes so my single * state of man that function 

Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is 

But what is not. 

Ban, Look, how our partner's rapt. 

Mach. \Aside\ If chance will have me king, why, chance may 
crown me, 
Without my stir* 

Ban, New honours come upon him. 

Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould 
But with the aid of use. 

Mach. \^Aside\ Come what come may. 
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day. 

Ban. Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure, 

Mach. Give me your favour : my dull brain was wrought 
With things forgotten. ^Kind gentlemen, your pains 
Are register'd where every day I turn 
The leaf to read them. Let us toward the king. 
Think upon what hath chanced, and at more time. 
The interim having weigh'd it, let us speak 
Our free hearts each to other. 

Ban. Very gladly. 

Mach. Till then, enough. Come, friends. \Exeunt. 



Scene IV. A Camp near Forres. The same as scene second. 

Flourish. Enter Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox, and 

Attendants. 

Dun. Is execution done on Cawdor ? Are not 
Those in commission yet returned ? 

Mai, My liege. 

They are not yet come back. But I have spoke 
With one that saw him die, who did report 



22 MACBETH. [act i. 

vThat very frankly he confess'd his treasons, 
Implored your highness' pardon and set forth 
A deep repentance : nothing in his life 
Became him like the leaving it ; he died 
As one that had been studied in his death, 
To throw away the dearest thing he owed^ 
As 'twere a careless trifle. 

Dun, There's no art 

To find the mind's construction in the face : 
He was a gentleman on whom I built 
An absolute trust. 

Enter Macbeth, Banquo, Ross, and Angus. 

O worthiest cousin ! 
The sin of my ingratitude even now 
Was heavy on me : thou art so far before 
That swiftest wing of recompense is slow 
To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserved, 
That the proportion both of thanks and payment 
Might have been mine ! only I have left to say. 
More is thy due than more than all can pay. 

Mach. The service and the loyalty I owe. 
In doing it, pays itself. Your highness' part 
Is to receive our duties : and our duties 
Are to your throne and state, children and servants ; 
Which do but what they should, by doing every thing 
Safe toward your love and honour. 

Dun, Welcome hither : 

I have begun to plant thee, and will labour 
To make thee full of growing. Noble Banquo, 
That hast no less deserved, nor must be known 
No less to have done so : let me infold thee 
And hold thee to my heart. 

Ban, There if I grow, 

The harvest is your own. 



SCENE v.] MACBETH. 23 

Dun. My plenteous joys, 

Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves 
In drops of sorrow. Sons, kinsmen, thanes. 
And you whose places are the nearest, know. 
We will establish our estate upon 
Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter 
The Prince of Cumberland : which honour must 
Not unaccompanied invest him only. 
But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine 
On all deservers. From hence to Inverness, 
And bind us further to you. 

Mach, The rest is labour, which is not used for you : 
I'll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful 
The hearing of my wife with your approach ; 
So humbly take my leave. 

Dun. My worthy Cawdor ! ^ 

[^Flourish, Exeunt all but Macbeth. 

Macb. The Prince of Cumberland !^ that is a step 
On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap. 
For in my way it Hes. Stars, hide your fires ; 
Let not light see my black and deep desires : 
The eye wink at the hand ; yet let that be 
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see, \Exit. 

Scene V. Inverness, Macbeth'* s castle. 

Enter Lady Macbeth, reading a letter. 

Lady M. ' They met me in the day of success ; and I have 
learned by the perfeftest report, they have more in them than 
mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them 
further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. 

^ In those early days the crown of Scotland was not hereditary; and, upon the ap- 
pointment of a successor during the life of the King, the former was immediately erected 
Prince of Cumberland. Hence Macbeth^s anxiety. — White. 



24 MACBETH. [act i. 

Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from 

the king, who all-hailed me " Thane of Cawdor ;" by which 

title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred me to 

the coming on of time, with, " Hail, king that shalt be !" This 

ha^e I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of 

greatness, that thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by 

being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to 

thy heart, and farewell.' 

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be 

What thou art promised : yet do I fear thy nature j 

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness 

To catch the nearest way : thou wouldst be great ; 

Art not without ambition, but without 

The illness should attend it :. what thou wouldst highly, 

That wouldst thou holily ; wouldst not play false. 

And yet wouldst wrongly win : thou'ldst have, great Glamis, 

That which cries ' Thus thou must do, if thou have it ; 

And that which rather thou dost fear to do 

Than wishest should be undone.' Hie thee hither, 

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear. 

And chastise with the valour of my tongue 

All that impedes thee from the golden round,* 

Which fate and metaphysical * aid doth seem 

To have thee crown'd withal. 

Enter a Messenger. 

What is your tidings ? 

Mess, The king comes here to-night. 

Lady M. Thou'rt mad to say it : 

Is not thy master with him ? who, were 't so. 
Would have inform'd for preparation. 

Mess. So please you, it is true : our thane is coming : 
One of my fellows had the speed of him. 
Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more 
Than would make up his message. 



SCENE v.] MACBETH. 25 

Lady M, Give him tending ; 

He brings great news. \^Exit Messenger. 

The raven himself is hoarse 
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits 
iTiat tend on mortal^ thoughts, unsex me here. 
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full 
Of direst cruelty ! make thick my blood, 
Stop up the access and passage to remorse, 
That no compunftious visitings of nature 
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between 
The efFeft and it ! Come to my woman's breasts. 
And take my milk for gall,^ you murdering ministers, 
Wherever in your sightless ^ substances 
You wait on nature's mischief ! Come, thick night, 
And pall* thee in«the dunnest smoke of hell. 
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes. 
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,* 
To cry ' Hold, hold !' 

Enter Macbeth. 

Great Glamis ! worthy Cawdor ! 
Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter ! 
Thy letters have transported me beyond 
This ignorant present, and I feel now 
The future in the instant. 

Macb, ' My dearest love, 

Duncan comes here to-night. 

Lady M. And when goes hence ? 

Macb, To-morrow, as he purposes. 

^ That is, not use my milk for gall, but give me gall instead of my milk. 

^ There have been various substitutes proposed by the commentators for the word * blan- 
ket,* as * blank height,' *blankness,' * blackness,* &c. Mr. Grant White says: — < The 
man who does not apprehend the meaning and the pertinence of the figure "the blanket 
of the dark,** had better shut his Shakespeare, and give his days and nights to the peru- 
sal of — some more correct and classic writer.* 
2 



26 MACBETH. [act i. 

Lady M. O, never 

Shall sun that morrow see ! 
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men 
May read strange matters. To beguile the time, 
Look like the time ; bear welcome in your eye, 
Your hand, your tongue : look like the innocent flower, • 

But be the serpent under 't. He that's coming 
Must be provided for : and you shall put 
This night's great business into my dispatch ; 
Which shall to all our nights and days to come 
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom. 

Macb. We will speak further. 

Lady M. Only look up clear ; 

To alter favour*^ ever is to fear : 
Leave all the rest to me. [^Exeunt. 

Scene VL Before Macbeth' s castle. 

Hautboys. Enter Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Banquo, 
Lennox, Macduff, Ross, Angus, and Attendants. 

Dun. This castle hath a pleasant seat \ the air 
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
Unto our gentle senses. 

Ban. This guest of summer. 

The temple-haunting martlet, does approve 
By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath 
Smells wooingly here : no jutty,^ frieze. 
Buttress, nor coign "^ of vantage, but this bird 
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : 
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed 
The air is delicate. 

Enter Lady Macbeth. 

Dun. ^ See, see, our honour'd hostess ! 

The love that follows us sometime is our trouble. 
Which still we thank as love. Herein I teach you 



SCENE VII.] MACBETH. 27 

How you shall bid God'ild ^ us for your pains, 
And thank us for your trouble. 

Lady M. All our service 

In every point twice done, and then done double. 
Were poor and single * business to contend 
Against those honours deep and broad wherewith 
Your majesty loads our house : for those of old, 
And the late dignities heap'd up to them, 
We rest your hermits."^ ^ 

Dun, Where's the thane of Cawdor ? 

We coursed him at the heels, and had a purpose 
To be his purveyor : but he rides well. 
And his great love, sharp as his spur, hath holp him 
To his home before us. Fair and noble hostess, 
We are your guest to-night. 

Lady M, Your servants ever 

Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs, in compt. 
To make their audit at your highness' pleasure. 
Still to return your own. 

Dun. Give me your hand ; 

Conduft me to mine host : we love him highly. 
And shall continue our graces towards him. 
By your leave, hostess. \Exeunt. 

Scene VH. MachetVs castle. 

Hautboys. Enter Macbeth. 

Mach. If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well 
It were done quickly : if the assassination 
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch. 
With his ^ surcease,*^ success \ that but this blow 
Might be the be-all and the end-all here, 
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, 

* * His ' for < its,' referring to assassination. 



28 MACBETH. [act i. 

We'ld jump the life to come/ But in these cases 
We still have judgement here ; that we but teach 
Bloody instruitions, which being taught return 
To plague the inventor : this even-handed justice 
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice 
To our own lips. He's here in double trust : 
First, as I am his kinsman and his subje£i:, 
Strong both against the deed ; then, as his host, 
Who should against his murderer shuSthe door, 
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan 
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
So clear in his great oiSce, that his virtues 
Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued against 
The deep damnation of his taking-oiF; 
And pity, like a naked new-born babe. 
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim horsed 
Upon the sightless couriers of the air. 
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye. 
That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur 
To prick the sides of my intent, but only 
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself 
And falls on the other. ^ 

Enter Lady Macbeth. 
How now ! what news ? 
Lady M. He has almost supp'd : why have you left the chamber ? 
Mach. Hath he askM for me ? 
Lady M, Know you not he has ? 

^ That is, set It at nauglit, disregard it. 

^ Hanmer inserted *side' here upon conjefture, and some editors have followed him. 
'Side' may have been meant by the Poet, but it was not said. And the sense fech 
better without it, as this shows the speaker to be in such an eagerly-expe£lant state of 
mind as to break off the instant he has a prospedt of .any news. — It hath been in- 
geniously proposed to change * itself* into 'its sell,* an old word for saddle. But no 
change is necessary, the using of *self' for *aim' or * purpose * being quite lawful and 
idiomatic; as we often say, such a one * overshot himself,* that is, overshot his mark, 
his aim. — Hudson. 



SCENE VII.] MACBETH. 29 

Macb, We will proceed no further in this business : 
He hath honour'd me of late ; and I have bought 
Golden opinions from all sorts of people, 
Which would be worn now 'in their newiest gloss, 
Not cast aside so soon. 

Lady M, Was the hope drunk 

Wherein you dress'd yourself ? hath it slept since ? 
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale 
At what it did so freely ? From this time 
Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard 
To be, the same in thine own a£l and valour 
As thou art in desire ? Wouldst thou have that 
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life, 
And live a coward in thine own esteem, ^ 

Letting ' I dare not' wait upon ' I would,' 
Like the poor cat i' the adage ?^ 

Macb, Prithee, peace : 

I dare do all that may become a man ; • 
Who dares do more is none. 

Lady M, What beast was 't then 

That made you break this enterprise to me ? 
When you durst do it, then you were a man ; 
And, to be more than what you were, you would 
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place 
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both : 
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now 
Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know 
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me : 
I would, while it was smiling in my face. 
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums. 
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you 
Have done to this. 

Macb, If we should fail ? 

' The proverb in old English was, The catt wolle fyssh, etc., but she wol not her fote 
wete. 



30 MACBETH. [act ii. 

Lady M. We fail ! 

But screw your courage to the sticking-place. 
And we'll not fail. When Duncan is asleep — 
Whereto the rather shall his day's hard journey 
Soundly invite him — his two chamberlains 
Will I with wine and wassail so convince'^ 
That memory, the warder of the brain, 
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason 
A limbec'^' only: when in swinish sleep 
Their drenched natures lie as in a death, 
What cannot you and I perform upon 
The unguarded Duncan ? what not put upon 
His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt 
Of our great quell ?^ 

Mach. Bring faith men-children only ; 

For thy undaunted mettle should compose 
Nothing but males. Will it not be received, 
When we have mark'd with blood those sleepy two 
Of his own chamber, and used their very daggers, 
That they have done't ? 

Lady M, Who dares receive it Qther, 

As we shall make our griefs and clamour roar 
Upon his death ? 

Macb, I am settled, and bend up 

Each corporal agent to this terrible feat. 
Away, and mock the time with fairest show : 
False faith must hide what the false heart doth know. \^Exeitnt. 



ACT II. 
Scene I. Inverness, Court of MachetVs castle. 

Enter BANQUO^and Fleance bearing a torch before him. 
Ban, How goes the night, boy ? 
Fie, The moon is down ; I have not heard the clock. 



SCENE I.] MACBETH. 31 

Ban. And she goes down at twelve. 

Fie. I take't, 'tis later, sir. 

Ban. Hold, take my sword. There's husbandry* in heaven, 
Their candles are all out. Take thee that too. 
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, 
And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers, 
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature 
Gives way to in repose ! Give me my sword. 
Who's there ? 

Enter Macbeth and a Servant with a torch. 

Macb. A friend. 

Ban. What, sir, not yet at rest ? The king's a-bed : 
He hath been in unusual pleasure, and 
Sent forth great largess to your offices : 
This diamond he greets your wife withal. 
By the name of most kind hostess ; and shut up 
In measureless content. 

Macb. Being unprepared. 

Our will became the servant to defed. 
Which else should free have wrought. 

Ban. All 's well. 

I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters : 
To you they have show'd some truth. 

Macb, I think not of them : 

Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve, 
We would spend it in some words upon that business, 
If you would grant the time. 

Ban, At your kind'st leisure. 

Macb, If you shall cleave to my consent,* when 'tis 
It shall make honour for you. 

Ban, So I lose none 

In seeking to augment it, but syll keep 
My bosom franchised and allegiance clear, 

* That is, if you will stick to my side, to what has my consent ; if you will tie your 
iclf to my fortunes and counsel. 



32 MACBETH. [act ii. 

I shall be counsell'd. 

Macb. ^ Good repose the while ! 

Ban, Thanks, sir : the like to you ! 

\_Exeunt BanquQ and Fleance. 

Macb. Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, 
She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed. \_Exit Servant, 

Is this a dagger which I see before me. 
The handle toward my hand ? Come, let me clutch thee. 
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. 
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible 
To feeling as to sight ? or art thou but 
A dagger of the mind, a false creation, 
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain ? 
I see thee yet, in form as palpable 
As this which now I draw. 

Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; 
And such an instrument I was to use. 
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses. 
Or else worth all the rest : I see thee still ; 
And on thy blade and dudgeon* gouts* of blood. 
Which was not so before. There's no such thing : 
It is the bloody business which informs 
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half-world 
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse 
The curtain'd sleep ; witchcraft celebrates 
Pale Hecate's offerings ; and wither'd murder, 
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, 
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. 
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design 
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth. 
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear 
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout. 
And take the present horror from the time. 
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives : 
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. [vf bell rings. 



SCENE I.] MACBETH. 33 

I go, and it is done : the bell invites me. 

Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell 

That summons thee to heaven, or to hell. \^Exlt. 

Enter Lady Macbeth. 

Lady M, That w^hich hath made them drunk hath made me 
bold; 
What hath quench'd them hath given me fire. Hark ! Peace ! 
It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman 
Which gives the stern'st good night. He is about it : 
The doors are open, and the surfeited grooms 
Do mock their charge with snores : I have drugg'd their possets, 
That death and nature do contend about them, 
Whether they live or die. 

Macb. IfFithin] Who's there ? what, ho ! 

Lady M. Alack ! I am afraid they have awaked 
And 'tis not done : the attempt and not the deed 
Confounds us. Hark ! I laid their daggers ready ; 
He could not miss 'em. Had he not resembled 
My father as he slept I had done't. 

Re-enter Macbeth. 

My husband ! 

Macb. I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise ? 

Lady M. I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. 
Did not you speak ? 

Macb. When ? 

Lady M. Now. 

Macb, As I descended ? 

Lady M, Ay. 

Macb. Hark ! 
Who lies i' the second chamber ? 

Lady M. • Donalbain. 

Macb. This is a sorry sight. \Looklng on hh hands. 

Lady M. A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight. 
2* 



34 MACBETH. [act ii. 

A'lach, There's one did laugh in's sleep, and one cried 
'Murder!' 
That they did av/ake each other : I stood and heard them : 
But they did say their prayers, and address'd them 
Again to sleep. 

Lady M, There are two lodged together. 

Mach. One cried ' God bless us !' and ' Amen' the other, 
As they had seen me with these hangman's hands : 
Listening their fear, I could not say ' Amen,' 
When they did say ' God bless us !' 

Lady M, Consider it not so deeply. 

Mach, But wherefore could not I pronounce ' Amen '? 
I had most need of blessing, and ^ Amen ' 
Stuck in my throat. 

Lady M, These deeds must not be thought 

After these ways ; so, it will make us mad. 

Mach. Methought I heard a voice cry ' Sleep no more ! 
Macbeth does murder sleep ' — the innocent sleep. 
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave ^ of care, 
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, 
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
Chief nourisher in life's feast, — 

Lady M, What do you mean ? 

Mach, Still it cried ' Sleep no more !' to all the house : 
' Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor 
Shall sleep no more : Macbeth shall sleep no more.' 

Lady M. Who was it that thus cried ? Why, worthy thane, 
You do unbend your noble strength, to think 
So brainsickly of things. Go get some water. 
And wash this filthy witness from your hand. 
Why did you bring these daggers from the place ? 
They must lie there : go carry them, and smear 
The sleepy grooms with blood. 

Mach. I '11 go no more : 

1 am afraid to think what I have done ; 



SCENE I. MACBETH. 



35 



Look on't again I dare not. 

Lady M, Infirm of purpose ! 

Give me the daggers : the sleeping and the dead 
Are but as picSlures : *tis the eye of childhood 
That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, 
I'll gild the faces of the grooms v^ithal, 
For it must seem their guilt. \Exit, Knocking withi? 

Mach. ^ Whence is that knocking ? 

How is't with me, when every noise appals me ? 
What hands are here ? ha ! they pluck out mine eyes ! 
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood 
Clean from my hand ? No ; this my hand will rather 
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,^ 
Making the green one red. 

Re-enter Lady Macbeth. 

Lady M, My hands are of your colour, but I shame 
To wear a heart so white. \Knocking within?^ I hear a knocking 
At the south entry : retire we to our chamber : 
A little water clears us of this deed : 
How easy is it then ! Your constancy 
Hath left you unattended.^ [Knocking within,'] Hark ! more 

knocking : 
Get on your nightgown,^ lest occasion call us 
And show us to be watchers : be not lost 
So poorly in your thoughts. 

Macb. To know * my deed, 'twere best not know myself. 

\Knocking within. 
Wake Duncan with thy knocking ! I would thou couldst ! 

\Exeunt. Knocking within. 



^ That is, your firmness \i2i\.\i forsaken you, doth not attend you. 

^ Macbeth's nightgown, that worn by Julius Caesar (A61 II. Sc. 2) and by the Ghost 
in the old Hamlet (Adt III. Sc. 4), answers to our robes de chambrCy and were not, a? 
I have found many intelligent people to suppose, the garments worn in bed. — ;Whitz. 



36 MACBETH. [act ii. 

Enter a Porter. 

P^r/^r. Here's a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of 
hell-gate, he should have old^ turning the key. \_KnQc king within r\ 
Knock, knock, knock! Who's there, i' the name of Beelzebub? 
Here's a farmer, that hanged himself on th' expectation of plenty : 
come in time ; have napkins ^ enough about you ; here you'll 
sweat for 't. \_Knocking within,'] Knock, knock! Who's there, in 
th' other devil's name ? Faith, here's an equivocator, that could 
swear in both the scales against either scale ; who committed trea- 
son enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven : 
O, come in, equivocator. [^Knocking within,] Knock, knock, 
knock! Who's there? Faith, here's an English tailor come 
hither, for stealing out of a French hose : come in, tailor ; here 
you may roast your goose. \_Knocking within,] Knock, knock ; 
never at quiet ! What are you ? But this place is too cold for 
hell. I'll devil-porter it no further : I had thought to have let in 
some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlast- 
ing bonfire. [^Knocking within.] Anon, anon ! I pray you, remem- 
ber the porter. [_Opens the gate. 

Enter Macduff a7td Lennox. 

Macd. Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed, 
That you do lie so late ? 

Porter. 'Faith, sir, we — 

Macd, I believe drink gave thee the lie last night. 

Porter. That it did, sir, i' the very throat on me : but I requited 
him for his lie, and, I think, being too strong for him, though he 
took up my legs sometime, yet I made a shift to cast him. 

Macd. Is thy master stirring ? 
Our knocking has awaked him ; here he comes. 

Enter Macbeth. 
Len. Good morrow, noble sir ! 

Macb. Good morrow, both. 

Macd, Is the king stirring, worthy thane ? * 



SCENE I.] MACBETH. 37 

Macb. Not yet. 

Macd. He did command me to call timely on him : 
I have almost slipp'd the hour. 

Macb, I'll bring you to him. 

Macd, I know this is a joyful trouble to you ; 
But yet 'tis one. 

Macb, The labour we delight in physics pain. 
This is the door. 

Macd, I'll make so bold to call. 

For 'tis my limited"^ service. \_Extt, 

Len, Goes the king hence to-day ? 

Macb, He does : he did appoint so. 

Len, The night has been unruly : where we lay, 
Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say, 
Lamentings heard i' the air, strange screams of death, 
And prophesying^ with accents terrible 
Of dire combustion and confused events 
New hatch'd to the woful time : the obscure bird 
Clamour'd the livelong night : some say, the earth 
Was feverous and did shake. j 

Macb, 'Twas a rough night. 

Len, My young remembrance cannot parallel 

A fellow to it. 

Re-enter Macduff, 

Macd, O horror, horror, horror ! Tongue nor heart 
Cannot conceive nor name thee. 

^""'^^ \ What's the matter? 

Len, J 

Macd, Confusion now hath made his masterpiece. 
Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope 
The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence 
The life o' the building. 

Macb, What is't you say ? the life ? 

Len, Mean you his majesty ? 

Macd, Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight 



38 MACBETH. [act ii. 

With a new Gorgon : do not bid me speak ; 

See, and then speak yourselves. \_Exeunt Macbeth and Lennox. 

Awake, awake ! 
Ring the alarum-bell. Murder and treason ! 
Banquo and Donalbain ! Malcolm! awaka! 
Shake ofF this downy sleep, death's counterfeit, 
And look on death itself ! up, up, and see 
The great doom's image ! Malcolm ! Banquo ! 
As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites. 
To countenance this horror ! \^Bell rings. 

Re-enter Macbeth and Lennox. 
Macb, Had I but died an hour before this chance, 
I had lived a blessed time ; for from this instant 
There's nothing serious in mortahty : 
All is but toys : renown and grace is dead ; 
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees 
Is left this vault to brag of. 

Enter Malcolm and Donalbain. 

Don, What is amiss ? 

Macb. You are, and do not know *t : 

The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood 
Is stopp'd 'y the very source of it is stopp'd. 

Macd, Your royal father's murder'd. 

Mai O, by whom ? 

Len, Those of his chamber, as it seem'd, had done't: 
Their hands and faces were all badged with blood ; 
So were their daggers, which unwiped we found 
Upon their pillows : 

They stared, and were distra6led ; no man's life 
Was to be trusted with them. 

Macb, O, yet I do repent me of my fury, 
That I did kill them. 

Macd!' Wherefore did you so ? 

Macb, Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, 



SCENE I.] MACBETH. 39 

Loyal and neutral, in a moment ? No man : 

The expedition of my violent love 

Outran the pauser reason. Here lay Duncan, 

His silver skin laced with his golden blood, 

And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature 

For ruin's wasteful entrance : there, tjie murderers, 

Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers 

Unmannerly breech'd with gore : who could refrain, 

That had a heart to love, and in that heart 

Courage to make his love known ? 

Ban, Let us meet, 

And question this most bloody piece of work. 
To know it further. Fears and scruples shake us : 
In the great hand of God I stand, and thence 
Against the undivulged pretence * I fight 
Of treasonous mahce. 

Macd, And so do L 

JIL So all. 

Macb, Let 's briefly put on manly readiness. 
And meet i' the hall together. 

AIL Well contented. 

\_Exeunt all hut Malcolm and Donalhain. 

MaL This murderous shaft that's shot 
Hath not yet lighted, and our safest way 
Is to avoid the aim. Therefore to horse. \Exeunt. 



ACT III. 

Scene I. Outside Macbeth'" s castle. 

Enter Ross with an old Man. 

Old M. Threescore and ten I can remember well : 
Within the volume of w^hich time I have seen 
Hours dreadful and things strange, but this sore night 



40 MACBETH. [act hi. 

Hath trifled former knowings. 

Ross. Ah, good father, 

Thou seest,the heavens, as troubled with man's acS, 
Threaten his bloody stage : by the clock 'tis day, 
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp : 
Is't night's predominance, or the day's shame. 
That darkness does the face, of earth entomb, 
When living light should kiss it ? 

Old M, 'Tis unnatural, 

Even hke the deed that's done. On Tuesday last 
A falcon towering in her pride of place 
Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd. 

Ross. And Duncan's horses — a thing most strange and certain — 
Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, 
Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out. 
Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make 
War with mankind. 

Old M. 'Tis said they eat each other. 

Ross. They did so, to the amazement of mine eyes, 
That look'd upon 't. Here comes the good Macduff. 

Enter Macduff. • 

How goes the world, sir, now ? 

Macd. Why, see you not ? 

Ross. Is't known who did this more than bloody deed ? 

Macd. Those that Macbeth hath slain. 

Ross. Alas, the day ! 

What good could they pretend ?* 

Macd. They were suborn'd : 

Malcolm and Donalbain, the king's two sons, 
Are stol'n away and fled, which puts upon them 
Suspicion of the deed. 

Ross. 'Gainst nature still : 

Thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin "^ up 
Thine own Hfe's means ! Then 'tis most hke 



SCENE II.] MACBETH. 41 

The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth. 

Macd, He is already named, and gone to Scone 
To be invested. 

Ross, Where is Duncan's body ? 

Macd\ Carried to Colme-kill, 
The sacred storehouse of his predecessors 
And guardian of their bones. 

Ross. Will you to Scone ? 

Macd. No, cousin, I'll to Fife. 

Ross. Well, I will thither. 

Macd. Well, may you see things well done there : adieu ! 
Lest our old robes sit easier than our new ! 

Ross. Farewell, father. 

Old M. God's benison go with you, and with those 
That would make good of bad and friends of foes ! \Exeunt. 

Scene II. Forres. The palace. 

Enter Banquo. 

Ban. Thou hast it now : king, Cawdor, Glamis, all, 
As the weird women promised, and I fear 
Thou play'dst most foully for't: yet it was said 
It should not stand in thy posterity. 
But that myself should be the root and father 
Of many kings. If there come truth from them — 
As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine — 
Why, by the verities on thee made good. 
May they not be my oracles as well 
And set me up in hope ? But hush, no more. 

Sennet sounded. £«/^r Macbeth, as king-. Lady Macbeth, ^j 
queen ^ Lennox, Ross, Lords, Ladies, arid Attendants. 

Mach. Here's our chief guest. 

Lady M. If he had been forgotten, 

It had been as a gap in our great feast. 



42 MACBETH. [act hi. 

And all-thing unbecoming. 

Mach, To-night we hold a solemn supper, sir, 
And I'll request your presence. 

Ban, Let your highness 

Command upon me, to the which my duties 
Are with a most indissoluble tie 
For ever knit. 

Macb. Ride you this afternoon ? 

Ban. Ay, my good lord. 

Macb. We should have else desired your good advice. 
Which still hath been both grave and prosperous. 
In this day's council j but we'll take to-morrow. 
Is't far you ride ? 

Ban. As far, my lord, as will fill up the time 
'Twixt this and supper : go not my horse the better, 
I must become a borrower of the night 
For a dark hour or twain. 

Macb. "^ Fail not our feast. 

Ban. My lord, I will not.. 

Macb. We hear our bloody cousins are bestow'd 
In England and in Ireland, not confessing 
Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers 
With strange invention : ^ but of that to-morrow, 
When therewithal we shall have cause of state 
Craving us jointly. Hie you to horse : adieu. 
Til] you return to-night. Goes Fleance with you ? 

Ban. Ay, my good lord : our time does call upon's. 

Macb. I wish your horses swift and sure of foot. 
And so I do commend you to their backs. 

Farewell. [^a-/V Banquo, 

Let every man be master of his time 
Till seven at night ; to make society 
The sweeter welcome-, we w^ill keep ourself 
Till supper-time alone : while then, God be with you. 

[_Exeunt all but Macbeth and an Attendant. 



SCENE II.] MACBETH. 43 

Sirrah, a word with you : attend those men 

Our pleasure ? 

Attend. They are, my lord, without the palace-gate. • 
Mach. Bring them before us. \Exit Attendant. 

To be thus, is nothing ; 

But to be safely thus : our fears in Banquo 

Stick deep ; and in his royalty of nature 

Reigns that which would be fear'd : 'tis much he dares, 

And, to that dauntless temper of his mind. 

He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour 

To aft in safety. There is none but he 

Whose being I do fear : and under him 

My Genius is rebuked, as it is said 

Mark Antony's was by Caesar. He chid the sisters, 

When first they put the name of king upon me, 

And bade them speak to him ; then prophet-like 

They hail'd him father to a line of kings : 

Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown 

And put a barren sceptre in my gripe. 

Thence to be wrench'd with an unhneal hand, 

No son of mine succeeding. If't be so, 

Yox Banquo's issue have 1 filed ^ my mind ; 

For them the gracious Duncan have I murder'd \ 

Put rancours in the vessel of my peace 

Only for them, and mine eternal jewel 

Given to the common enemy of man. 

To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings ! 

Rather than so, come, fate, into the list. 

And champion me to the utterance !* Who's there ? 

Re-enter Attendant, with two Murderers. 

Now go to the door, and stay there till we call. \_Exit Attendant. 
Was it not yesterday we spoke together ? 

First Mur, It was, so please your highness. 

Macb. Well then, now 



44 MACBETH. [act hi. 

Have you consider'd of my speeches ? Know 

That it v/as he in the times past which held you 

So under fortune, which you thought had been 

Our innocent self: this I made good to you 

In our last conference, 'pass'd in probation with you, 

How you were borne in hand,^ how cross'd,. the instruments. 

Who wrought with them, and all things else that might 

To half a soul and to a notion crazed 

Say ' Thus did Banquo.' 

First Mur, You made it knov/n to us. 

Macb, I did so ; and went further, which is now 
Our point of second meeting. Do you find 
Your patience so predominant in your nature, 
That you can let this go ? Are you so gospell'd, 
To pray for this good man and for his issue. 
Whose heavy hand hath bow'd you to the grave 
And beggar'd yours for ever. 

First Mur. We are men, my liege. 

Macb. Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men ; 
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, 
Shoughs,'" water-rugs and demi-wolves, are clept 
All by the name of dogs : and so of men. 
Now if you have a station in the file, 
Not i' the worst rank of manhood, say it. 
And I will put that business in your bosoms 
Whose execution takes your enemy off^. 
Grapples you to the heart and love of us. 
Who wear our health but sickly in his life, 
Which in his death were perfeft. 

Sec. Mur. I am one, my liege, 

Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world 
Have so incensed that I am reckless what 
I do to spite the world. 

^ That is, passed in proving to you how you were delusively encouraged, supported in 
a belief of favor. 



SCENE II.] MACBETH. 45 

First Mur. And I another 

So weary with disasters, tugg'd with fortune, 
That I would set my Hfe on any chance, 
To mend it or be rid on't. 

Macb, Both of you 

Know Banquo was your enemy. 

Both Mur, True, my lord. 

Macb, So is he mine, and in such bloody distance 
That every minute of his being thrusts 
Against my near'st of life : and though I could 
With barefaced, power sweep him from my sight 
And bid my will avouch it, yet I must not. 
For* certain friends that are both his and mine, 
Whose loves I may not drop, but wail his fall 
Who I myself struck down : and thence it is 
That I to your assistance do make love. 
Masking the business from the common eye 
For sundry weighty reasons. 

Sec. Mur. We shall, my lord, 

Perform what you command us. 

First Mur. Though our lives — 

Macb. Your spirits shine through you. Within this hour at 
most 
I will advise you where to plant yourselves. 
Acquaint you with the perfeft spy o^ the time. 
The moment on't ; for't must be done to-night,^ 
And something from the palace ; always thought 
That I require a clearness : and with him — 
To leave no rubs nor blotches in the work — 
Fleance his son, that keeps him company, 

^ We understand this passage as follows : Macbeth has said, 

' 1 will advise you where to plant yourselves :' 

he then adds, 'Acquaint you,* — inform yourselves — 'with the perfect spy' — with a most 
careful inquiry — * o' the time' — the expeded time of Banquo's return j — 

'The moment on't; for't must be done to-night.' — Knight. 



46 MACBETH. [act hi. 

Whose absence is no less material to me 
Than is his father's, must embrace the fate 
Of that dark hour. Resolve yourselves apart: 
I'll come to you anon. 

Both Mur, We are resolved, my lord. 

Mach. I'll call upon you straight : abide within. 

\Exeunt Murderers. 
It is concluded : Banquo, thy soul's flight, 
If it find heaven, must find it out to-night. \Exit. 



Scene III, The palace Another room. 

Enter Lady Macbeth and a Servant. 

Lady M, Is Banquo gone from* court ? 

Serv, Ay, madam, but returns again to-night. 

Lady M. Say to the king,. I would attend his leisure 
For a few words. 

Serv. Madam, I will. \Exit. 

Lady M. Nought's had, all's spent, 

Where our desire is got without content : 
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy 
Than by destruftion dwell in doubtful joy. 

Enter Macbeth. 

How now, my lord ! why do you keep alone. 
Of sorriest * fancies your companions making ; 
Using those thoughts which should indeed have died 
With them they think on ? Things without all remedy 
Should be without regard : what's done is done. 

Mach. We have scotch'd '^ the snake, not kill'd it : 
She'll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice 
Remains in danger of her former tooth. 
But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, 
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep 



SCENE III.] MACBETH. 47 

In the afflicStion of these terrible dreams 

That shake us nightly : better be with the dead, 

Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, 

Than on the torture of the mind to lie 

In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave ; 

After life's fitful fever hf sleeps well ; 

Treason has done his w®rst : nor steel, nor poison, 

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing. 

Can touch him further. 

Lady M» Come on ; 

Gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks ; 
Be bright and jovial among your guests to-night. 

Mach. So shall I, love \ and so, I pray, be you: 
Let your^remembrance apply to Banquo ; 
Present him eminence,"^ both with eye and tongue : 
Unsafe the while, that we 

Must lave our honours in these flattering streams,^ 
And make our faces visards to our hearts. 
Disguising what they are. 

Lady M, You must leave fhis. 

Macb, O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife ! 
Thou know'st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives. 

Lady M, But in them nature's copy's not eterne.'^ 

Macb, There's comfort y^t ; they are assailable ; 
Then be thou jocund : ere the bat hath flown 
His cloister'd flight ; ere to black Hecate's summons 
The shards-borne beetle with his drowsy hums 
Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done 
A deed of dreadful note. 

Lady M, What's to be done ? 

Macb, Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,"* 
Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling* ^ight. 
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day. 
And with thy Hoody and invisible hand 

^ That is, unsafe is that time in which our royalty is obliged to stoop to flattery. 



48 MACBETH. [act hi. 

Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond 

Which keeps me pale ! Light thickens, and the crow 

Makes wing to the rooky wood : 

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse. 

Whiles night's black agents to their prey do rouse. 

Thou marvell'st at my words : but hold thee still ; 

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill : 

So, prithee, go with me. \_Exeunt» 

Scene IV. Hall in the palace, 

A banquet prepared, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Ross, Lennox, 
Lords, and Attendants discovered, 

Mach, You know your own degrees ; sit down : at first 
And last the hearty welcome. 

Lords, Thanks to your majesty. 

Mach, Ourself will mingle with society 
And play the humble host. 
Our hostess keeps her state,^ but in best time 
We will require her welcome. 

Lady M, Pronounce it for me, sir, to all our friends, 
For my heart speaks they are welcome. 

Enter first Murderer, to the door, 

Mach, See, they encounter thee with their hearts' thanks. 
Both sides are even : here I'll sit i' the midst : 
Be large in mirth ; anon we'll drink a measure 
The table round. \Approaching the door'\ There's blood upon thy 
face. 

Mur, 'Tis Banquo's then. 

Mach, 'Tis better thee without than he within.' 
Is he dispatch'd? 

^ Most editors, following Johnson, explain these words to mean * I am better pleased 
that his blood should be on thy face than he in this room.* But such an explanation 
strips the entire passage of its poetic and intensely dramatic interest. Macbeth's 



SCENE IV.] MACBETH. 49 

Mur. My lord, his throat is cut ; that I did for him. 

Macb. Thou art the best o' the cut-throats : yet he's good 
That did the Hke for Fleance : if thou didst it, 
Thou art the nonpareil. 

Mur. Most royal sir, 

Fleance is 'scaped. 

Macb. \Astde\ Then comes my fit again : I had else been 
perfeft. 
Whole as the marble, founded as the rock, 
As broad and general as the casing air : 
But now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in 
To saucy doubts and fears. — But Banquo's safe ? 

Mur. Ay, my good lord : safe in a ditch he bides. 
With twenty trenched gashes on his head ; 
The least a death to nature. 

Macb. Thanks for that. 

\As'ide\ There the grown serpent lies ; the worm that 's fled 
Hath nature that in time will venom breed 
No teeth for the present. Get thee gone : to-morrow 
We'll hear ourselves again. \_Exit Murderer. 

Lady M. My royal lord. 

You do not give the cheer : the feast is sold 
That is not often vouch'd, while 'tis a-making, 
'Tis given with welcome ;^ to feed were best at home ; 
From thence the sauce to meat is ceremony ; 
Meeting were bare without it. 

Macb. Sweet remembrancer ! 

Now good digestion wait on appetite, 

speech b not in answer to the murderer's words, but is addressed to his own thought, and 
means : *Tis better that I should be compelled to look * without' upon thee who repre- 
sent in person my murderous deed, than that I should see Banquo here * within.* Thus, 
too, these words, showing, as they do, whither Macbeth's thoughts arc tending, are a fit 
prelude to the adtual apparition of the murdered man. — Editor. 

* The feast is sold — is offered as a mere return for feasts received — when the 
host does not frequently vouch, while it is going on or * a-making,* that *tis given 
with welcome. 
3 



50 MACBETH. [act hi. 

And health on both ! 

Len. May *t please your highness sit. 

Mach, Here had we now our country's honour roof'd, 
Were the graced person of our Banquo present ; 

The Ghost of BANquo enters^ and sits in Macbeth^ s place. 

Who may I rather challenge for unkindness 
Than pity for mischance ! 

Ross. His absence, sir, 

Lays blame upon his promise. Please 't your highness 
To grace us with your royal company. 

Macb. The table's full. 

Len. Here is a place reserved, sir. 

Macb. Where ? 

Len. Here, my good lord. What is't that moves your high- 
ness ? 

Macb. Which of you have done this ? 

Lords. What, my good lord ? 

Macb. Thou canst not say I did it : never shake 
Thy gory locks at me. 

Ross. Gentlemen, rise ; his highness is not well. 

Lady M. Sit, worthy friends : my lord is often thus, 
And hath been from his youth : pray you, keep seat •, 
The fit is momentary ; upon a thought 
He will again be well : if much you note him, • 
You shall offend him and extend his passion : 
Feed, and regard him not. Are you a man ? 

Macb. Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that 
Which might appal the devil. 

Lady M. O proper stuff! 

This is the very painting of your fear : 
This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said. 
Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws'^ and starts. 
Impostors to ^ true fear, would well become 
A woman's story at a winter's fire, 



SCENE IV.] MACBETH. 51 

Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself! 
Why do you make such faces ? When all's done, 
You look but on a stool. 

Mach. Prithee, see there ! behold ! look ! lo ! how say you ? 
Why, what care I ? If thou canst nod, speak too. 
If charnel-houses and our graves must send 
Those that we bury back, our monuments 
Shall be the maws of kites. \Exit Ghost. 

Lady M. What, quite unmann'd in folly ? 

Mach. If I stand here, I saw him. 

Lady M. Fie, for shame ! 

Mach. Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time, 
Ere humane statute purged the gentle weal ; 
Ay, and since too, murders have been perform'd 
Too terrible for the ear :" the time has been. 
That, when thb brains were out, the man would die. 
And there an end ; but now they rise again. 
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns. 
And push us from our stools : this is more strange 
Than such a murder is. 

Lady M. My worthy lord. 

Your noble friends do lack you. 

Mach. I do forget. 

Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends ; 
I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing 
To those that know me. Come, love and health to all ; 
Then Pll sit down. Give me some wine, fill full. 
I drink to the general joy o' the whole table. 
And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss ; 

The Ghost of Banquo re-enters^ and sits in Macheth^s place. 

Would he were here ! to all and him we thirst, 
And all to all. 

Lords. Our duties, and the pledge. 

Mach. Avaunt ! and quit my sight ! let the earth hide thee ! 



52 MACBETH. [act hi. 

Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold ; 
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes 
Which thou dost glare with. 

Lady M. Think of this, good peers. 

But as a thing of custom : 'tis no other ; 
Only it spoils the pleasure of the time. 

Macb. What man dare, I dare : 
Approach thou like the rugged Russian beai, 
The arm'd rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger ; 
Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves 
Shall never tremble : or be alive again. 
And dare me to the desert with thy sword ; 
If trembling I inhabit then,^ protest me 
The baby of a girl.^ Hence, horrible shadow ! 
Unreal mockery, hence ! * \_Exit Ghost, 

Why, so : being gone, 
I am a man again. Pray you, sit still. 

Lady M. You have displaced the mirth, broke the good 
meeting. 
With most admired disorder. 

Macb, Can such things be, 

And overcome us like a summer's cloud. 
Without our special wonder ? You make me strange 
Even to the disposition that I owe,*^ 
When how I think you can behold such sights. 
And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks. 
When mine is blanch'd with fear. 

Ross, What sights, my lord ? 

Lady M, I pray you, speak not ; he grows worse and worse ; 
Question enrages him : at once, good night : 
Stand not upon the order of your going, 

^ That is, if then I am encompassed by trembling, and so, if I inhabit trembling, — a 
use of * inhabit * so highly figurative, and so exceedingly rare, that it has made this 
passage the occasion of much controversy, but which is neither illogical nor without 
example. *But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel !' Psalm xxii. 3. 
—White. * That is, a girl's doll. 



SCENE I.] MACBETH. 53 

But go at once. A kind good night to all. 

[Exeunt all hut Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. 

Macb. It will have blood : they say blood will have blood : 
Stones have been known to move and trees to speak ; 
Augures * and understood relations have 
By maggot-pies * and choughs and rooks brought forth 
The secret'st man of blood. What is the night ? 

Lady M. Almost at odds with morning, which is which. 

Macb. How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person 
At our great bidding ? 

Lady M. Did you send to him, sir ? 

Macb. I hear it by the way, but I will send : 
There's not a one of them but in his house 
I keep a servant fee'd. I will to-morrow 
And betimes I will, to the weird sisters : 
More shall they speak, for now I am bent to know. 
By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good 
All causes shall give way : I am in blood 
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more. 
Returning were as tedious as go o'er. 

Lady M. You lack the season of all natures, sleep/ 

Macb. Come, we'll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse 
Is the initiate fear^ that wants hard use : 
We are yet but young in deed. \Exeunt. 

ACT IV. 

Scene I. A cavern. In the middle^ a boiling cauldron. 

Thunder. Enter the three Witches. 
First Witch. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd. 

* Johnson explains thig : * " You want sleep," which "seasons" or gives the relish 
to ** all natures." * 

'The * initiate fear' is the fear that attends the first stages of guilt. — The 'and* in 
this speech i^ redundant. 



54 MACBETH. [act iv. 

Sec. Witch. Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined. 
Third Witch. Harpier cries ' 'Tis time, tis time.' 

First Witch. Round about the cauldron go : 
In the poison'd entrails throw. 
Toad, that under cold stone 
Days and nights has thirty one 
Swelter'd venom sleeping got, 
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot. 

All. Double, double toil and trouble ; 
Fire burn and cauldron bubble. 

Sec. Witch. Fillet of a fenny snake, 
In the cauldron boil and bake ; 
Eye of newt and toe of frog. 
Wool of bat and tongue of dog. 
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, 
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing. 
For a charm of powerful trouble. 
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. 

All. Double, double toil and trouble ; 
Fire burn and cauldron bubble. 

Third Witch. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf. 
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf * 
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark. 
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark. 
Liver of blaspheming Jew, 
Gall of goat and slips of yew 
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse. 
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips, 
Finger of birth-strangled babe 
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab. 
Make the gruel thick and slab : 
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,* 
For the ingredients of our cauldron. 

All. Double, double toil and trouble ; 
Fire burn and cauldron bubble. 



SCENE I.] MACBETH. 55 

Sec. Witch. Cool it with a baboon's blood, 
Then the charm is firm and good. 

Enter Hecate, to the other three Witches. 

Hec. O, well done ! I commend your pains ; 
And every one shall share i' the gains : 
And now about the cauldron sing, 
Like elves and fairies in a ring, 
Enchanting all that you put in. 

Song. 

Black Spirits and White, 

Blue Spirits and Gray, 

Mingle, mingle, mingle. 

You that mingle may. [Hecate retires. 

Sec. Witch, By the pricking of my thumbs. 
Something wicked this way comes : 
Open, locks. 
Whoever knocks ! 

Enter Macbeth. 

Mach. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags ! 
What is 't you do ? 

All. A deed, without a name. 

Mach, I conjure you, by that which you profess, 
Howe'er you come to know it, answer me : 
Though you untie the winds, and let them fight 
Against the churches ; though the yesty waves 
Confound and swallow navigation up ; 
Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down ; 
Though castles topple on their warders' heads ; 
Though palaces and pyramids do slope 
Their heads to their foundations ; though the treasure 
Of nature's germins'^' tumble all together, 



56 MACBETH. [act iv. 

Even till destruction sicken ; answer mc 
To what I ask you. 

First Witch. Speak. 

Sec. Witch. Demand. 

Third Witch. We '11 answer. 

First Witch. Say, if thou'dst rather hear it from our mouths, 
Or from our masters ? 

Mach. Call 'em, let me see 'em. 

First Witch. Pour in sow's blood, that hath eaten 
Her nine farrow ; grease that's sweaten 
From the murderer's gibbet throw 
Into the flame. 

All. Come, high or low ; 

Thyself and office deftly^ show ! 

Thunder. First Apparition : an armed Head.^ 

Mach. Tell me, thou unknown power, — 

First Witch. He knows thy thought : 

Hear his speech, but say thou nought. 

First App, Macbeth ! Macbeth ! Macbeth ! beware Macduff; 
Beware the thane of Fife. Dismiss me : enough. [^Descends. 

Mach. Whate'er thou art, for thy good caution thanks ; 
Thou hast harp'd my fear aright : but one word more, — 

First Witch. He will not be commanded : here's another, 
More potent than the first. 

Thunder. Second Apparition : a bloody Child. 

Sec. App. Macbeth ! Macbeth ! Macbeth ! 

Mach. Had I three ears, I'ld hear thee. 

Sec. App. Be bloody, bold and resolute ; laugh to scorn 

* The armed head represents symbolically Macbeth's head cut off and brought to 
Malcolm by MarcdufF. The bloody child is Macduff, untimely ripped from his mother's 
womb. The child with a crown on his head and a bough in his hand is the royal Mal- 
colm, who ordered his soldiers to hew them down a bough, and bear it before them to 
Dunsinane. — Upton. 



SCENE I.] MACBETH. 57 

The power of man, for none of woman born 

Shall harm Macbeth. \_Descends. 

Mach, Then live,MacdufF: what need I fear of thee ? 
But yet I'll make assurance double sure, 
And take a bond of fate : thou shalt not live ; 
That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, 
And sleep in spite of thunder. 

Thunder. Third Apparition : a Child crowned^ with a tree in his hand. 

What is this. 
That rises like the issue of a king. 
And wears upon his baby-brow the round 
And top of sovereignty ? 

All. Listen, but speak not to't. 

Third App. Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care 
Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are : 
Macbeth shall never vanquished be until 
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill 
Shall come against him. [^Descends. 

Mach. That will never be : 

Who can impress^ the forest, bid the tree 
Unfix his earth-bound root ? Sweet bodements ! good ! 
Rebellion's head, rise never, till the wood 
Of Birnam rise, and our high-placed Macbeth 
Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath 
To time and mortal custom. Yet my heart 
Throbs to know one thing : tell me, if your art 
Can tell so much ; shall Banquo's issue ever 
Reign in this kingdom ? 

All. Seek to know no more. 

Mach. I will be satisfied : deny me this. 
And an eternal curse fall on you ! Let me know : 
Why sinks that cauldron ? and what noise is this ? [Hautboys. 

First Witch. Show ! 

Sec. Witch. Show! 
3* 



58 MACBETH. [act iv. 

Third Witch. Show! 

JIL Show his eyes, and grieve his heart ; 
Come hke shadows, so depart ! 

ji show of eight Kings, the last with a glass in his hand i Banquo's 

Ghost following, 

Macb. Thou art too Hke the spirit of Banquo : down ! 
Thy crown does sear mine eye-balls. And thy hair, 
Thou other gold-bound brow, is Hke the first. 
A third is like the former. Filthy hags ! 
Why do you show me this ? A fourth ! Start, eyes ! 
What, will the Hne stretch out to the crack of doom ?^ 
Another yet ! A seventh ! I'll see no more : 
And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass 
Which shows me many more ; and some I see 
That two-fold balls and treble sceptres carry : 
Horrible sight ! Now I see 'tis true ; 
For the blood-bolter'd * Banquo smiles upon me. 
And points at them for his. What, is this so ? 

[Music, The Witches vanish. 
Where are they ? Gone ? Let this pernicious hour 
Stand aye accursed in the calendar ! 
Come in, without there ! 

Enter Lennox. 

Len. What 's your grace's will ? 

Macb, Saw you the weird sisters ? 

Len, No, my lord. 

Macb, Came they not by you ? 

Len. No indeed, my lord. 

Macb. Infedled be the air whereon they ride. 
And damn'd all those that trust them ! I did hear 
The galloping of horse : who was't came by ? 

Len, 'Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word 
Macduff is fled to England. 

^^cb. Fled to England ! 



SCENE II.] MACBETH. 59 

Len. Ay, my good lord. 

Mach. \jiside\ Time, thou antioipatest my dread exploits : 
The flighty purpose never is o'ertook 
Unless the deed go with it : from this moment 
The very firstlings of my heart shall be 
The firstlings of my hand. And even now, 
To crown my thoughts with afts, be it thought and done : 
The castle of MacdufF I will surprise ; 
Seize upon Fife ; give to the edge o' the sword 
His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls 
That trace him in his line. No boasting hke a fool ; 
This deed I'll do before this purpose cool : 
But no more sights ! — Where are these gentlemen ? 
Come, bring me whfte they are. \Exeuni 

Scene II. England. Before the King^s palace. 
Enter Malcolm and Macduff. 

Mai. Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there 
Weep our sad bosoms empty. 

Macd. Let us rather 

Hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men 
Bestride ^ our down-fall'n birthdom : each new morn 
New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows 
Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds 
As if it felt with Scotland and yell'd out 
Like syllable of dolour. 

MaL What I believe, I'll wail ; 

What know, believe ; and what I can redress. 
As I shall find the time to friend,^ I will. 
What you have spoke, it may be so perchance. 
This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues. 
Was once thought honest : you have loved him well ; 
He hath not touch'd you yet. I am young ; but something 

*To * bestride * one that was down in battle, was a special bravery of friendship. 



6o MACBETH. [act iv. 

You may deserve of him through me ; and wisdom 
To offer up a weak, poor, innocent lamb 
To appease an angry god. 

Macd. I am not treacherous. 

MaL But Macbeth is. 

A good and virtuous nature may recoil 
In an imperial charge. But I shall crave your pardon ; 
That which you are, my thoughts cannot transpose : 
Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell : 
Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace. 
Yet grace must still look so. 

Macd. I have lost my hopes. 

MaL Perchance even there where I did find my doubts. 
Why in that rawness ^ left you wife and ch^fci. 
Those precious motives, those strong knots of love, 
Without leave-taking ? I pray you. 
Let not my jealousies be your dishonours. 
But mine own safeties. You may be rightly just, 
Whatever I shall think. 

Macd. Bleed, bleed, poor country : 

Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure. 
For goodness dare not check thee : wear thou thy wrongs j 
The title is afFeer'd.* Fare thee well, lord : 
I would not be the villain that thou think'st 
For the whole space that 's in the tyrant's grasp 
And the rich East to boot. 

MaL Be not offended : 

I speak not as in absolute fear of you. 
I think our country sinks beneath the yoke ; 
It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash 
Is added to her wounds : I think withal 
There would be hands uplifted in my right ; 
And here from gracious England have I offer 
Of goodly thousands : but for all this. 
When I shall tread upon the tyrant's head, 



SCENE II.] MACBETH. 61 

Or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country 
Shall have more vices than it had before, 
More suffer and more sundry ways than ever, 
By him that shall succeed. 

Macd. What should he be ? 

Mai. It is myself I mean : in whom I know 
All the particulars of vice so grafted 
That, when they shall be open'd, black Macbeth 
Will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state 
Esteem him as a lamb, being compared 
With my confineless harms. 

Macd. Not in the legions 

Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn'd 
In evils to top Macbeth. 

Mai. I grant him bloody, 

Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful. 
Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin 
That has a name : but there's no bottom, no-ne, 
In my voluptuousness : and my desire 
All continent impediments would o'erbear, 
That did oppose my will : better Macbeth, 
Than such a one to reign. 

Macd. Boundless intemperance 

In nature is a tyranny ; it hath been 
The untimely emptying of the happy throne, 
And fall of many kings. But fear not yet 
To take upon you what is yours. 

Mai. The king-becoming graces, 
Af justice, verity, temperance, stableness, 
Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, 
Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude, 
I have no relish of them, but abound 
In the division of each several crime, 
Adling it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should 
Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, 



62 MACBETH. [act iv. 

Uproar the universal peace, confound 
All unity on earth, 

Macd. O Scotland, Scotland ! 

MaL If such a one be fit to govern, speak : 
I am as I have spoken. 

Macd. Fit to govern ! 

No, not to live. O nation miserable ! 
With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd. 
When shalt thou see thy w^holesome days again, 
Since that the truest issue of thy throne 
By his own interdiftion stands accursed. 
And does blaspheme his breed ? Thy royal father 
Was a most sainted king : the queen that bore thee, 
Oftener upon her knees than on her feet. 
Died every day she lived. Fare thee well ! 
These evils thou repeat'st upon thyself 
Have banish'd me from Scotland. O my breast, 
Thy hope ends here ! 

MaL Macduff, this noble passion. 

Child of integrity, hath from my soul 
Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts 
To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth 
By many of these trains hath sought to win me 
Into his power ; and modest wisdom plucks me 
From over-credulous haste : but God above 
Deal between thee and me ! for even now 
I put myself to thy direction, and 
Unspeak mine own detraction ; here abjure 
The taints and blames I laid upon myself, * 

For strangers to my nature. What I am truly. 
Is thine and my poor country's to command : 
Whither indeed, before thy here-approach, 
Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike men. 
Already at a point, was setting forth. 
Now we'll together, and the chance of goodness 



SCENE II.] MACBETH. 63 

Be like our warranted quarrel ! Why are you silent ? 

Macd. Such welcome and unwelcome things at once 
'Tis hard to reconcile. 

MaL Well, more anon. 

See, who comes here ? 
My countryman ; but yet I know him not. 

Enter Ross. 

Macd. My ever gentle cousin, welcome hither. 

Mai. I know him now : good God betimes remove 
The means that makes us. strangers ! 

Ross. Sir, amen. 

Macd. Stands Scotland where it did ? 

Ross. Alas, poor country ! 

Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot 
Be call'd our mother, but our grave : where nothing. 
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile ; 
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air, 
Are made, not mark'd ; where violent sorrow seems 
A modern* ecstasy i"^ the dead man's knell 
Is there scarce ask'd for who; and good men's lives 
Expire before the flowers in their caps. 
Dying or ere they sicken. 

Macd. O, relation, 

Too nice, and yet too true ! 

Mai. What's the newest grief? 

Ross. That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker ; 
Each minute teems a new one. 

Macd. How does my wife ? 

Ross. Why, well. 

Macd. And all my children ? 

Ross. Well too. 

Macd. The tyrant has not batter'd at their peace ? 

Ross. No \ they were all at peace when I did leave 'em. 

Macd. Be not a niggard of your speech : how goes 't ? 



64 MACBETH. [act iv, 

Ross. When I came hither^to transport the tidings, 
Which I have heavily borne, t-here ran a rumour 
Of many v^orthy fellows that were out ; 
Which was to my belief witness'd the rather, 
For that I saw the tyrant's power a-foot : 
Now is the time of help ; your eye in Scotland 
Would create soldiers, make our women fight, 
To dofF their dire distresses. 

Mai. Be 't their comfort 

We are coming thither : gracious England hath 
Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men ; 
An older and a better soldier none 
That Christendom gives out. 

Ross. Would I could answer 

This comfort with the Hke ! But I have words 
That would be howl'd out in the desert air. 
Where hearing should not latch "^ them. 

Macd. What concern they ? 

The general cause ? or is it a fee-grief* 
Due to some single breast ? 

Ross. No mind that's honest 

But in it shares some woe, though the main part 
Pertains to you alone. 

Macd. If it be mine. 

Keep it not from me, quickly let me have it. 

Ross. Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever. 
Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound 
That ever yet they heard. 

Macd. Hum ! I guess at it. 

Ross. Your castle is surprised ; your wife and babes 
Savagely slaughter'd : to relate the manner. 
Were, on the quarry * of these murder'd deer, 
To add the death of you. 

Mai. Merciful heaven ! 

What, man ! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows ; 



SCENE II.] MACBETH. 65 

Give sorrow words : the grief that does not speak 
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break. 

Macd. My children too ? 

Ross. Wife, children, servants, all 

That could be found. 

Macd. And I must be from thence ! 

My wife kill'd too ? 

Ross. I have said. 

Mai. Be comforted : ; 

Let 's make us medicines of our great revenge. 
To cure this deadly grief. > 

Macd. He has no children. All my pretty ones ? 
Did you say all ? O hell-kite ! All ? 
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam 
At one fell swoop ? 

Mai. Dispute it like a man. 

Macd. I shall do so ; 

But I must also feel it as a man : 
I cannot but remember such things were. 
That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on, 
And would not take their part ? Sinful Macduff, 
They were all struck for thee ! naught that I am. 
Not for their own demerits, but forVnine, 
Fell slaughter on their souls : heaven rest them now ! 

Mai. Be this the whetstone of your sword : let grief 
Convert to anger ; blunt not the heart, enrage it. 

Macd. O, I could play the woman with mine eyes. 
And braggart with my tongue ! But, gentle heavens. 
Cut short all intermission ;* front to front 
Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself; 
Within my sword's length set him ; if he 'scape. 
Heaven forgive him too ! [^Exeunt. 



66 MACBETH. [act v- 



ACT V. 

Scene I. Dunsinane. Ante-room in the castle. 

Enter a Doilor of Physic and a Waiting-Gentlewoman. 

Do£l. I have two nights watched with you, but can perceive no 
truth in your report. When was it she last walked ? 

Gent. Since his majesty went into the field, I have seen her 
rise from her bed, throw her nightgown^ upon her, unlock her 
closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon't, read it, afterwards 
seal it, and again return to bed \ yet all this while in a most fast 
sleep. 

Do5l. A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the 
benefit of sleep and do the efFefts of watching ! In this slumbery 
agitation, besides her walking and other acStual performances, 
what, at any time, have you heard her say ? 

Gent. That, sir, which I will not report after her. 

Do£i. You may to me, and 'tis most meet you should. 

Gent. Neither to you nor any one, having no witness to con- 
firm my speech. • 

Enter TuiATiY Macbeth, with a taper. 
Lo you, here she comes ! This is her very guise, and, upon my 
life, fast asleep. Observe her ; stand close. 

DoSf. How came she by that light ? 

Gent. Why, it stood by her : she has light by her continually ; 
'tis her command. 

Do^. You see, her eyes are open. 

Gent. Ay, but their sense is shut. 

DoSf. What is it she does now? Look, how she rubs her 
hands. 

Gent. It is an accustomed aflion with her, to seem thus wash- 
ing her hands : I have known her continue in this a quarter of 

an hour. 

* See note, page 33. 



SCENE I.] MACBETH. 67 

Lady M. Yet here 's a spot. 

DoSf. Hark ! she speaks : I will set down what comes from her, 
to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly. 

Lady M. Out, damned spot ! out, I say ! One : two : why, 
then 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie ! a sol- 
dier, and afeard ? What need we fear who knows it, when none 
can call our power to account ? Yet who would have thought 
the old man to have had so much blood in him ? 

DoSf. Do you mark that ? 

Lady M. The thane of Fife had a wife ; where is she now ? 
What, will these hands ne'er be clean ? No more o' that, my 
lord, no more o' that : you mar all with this starting. 

DoSi. Go to, go to ; you have known what you should not. 

Gent, She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that : 
heaven knows what she has known. 

Lady M. Here 's the smell of the blood still : all the perfumes 
of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.^ Oh, oh, oh ! 

Da^. What a sigh is there ! The heart is sorely charged. 

Gent, I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dig- 
nity of the whole body. 

Do^. Well, well, well,— 

Gent, Pray God it be, sir. 

DoSf. This disease is beyond my practice : yet I have known 
those which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in 
their beds. 

Lady M, Wash your hands ; put on your nightgown \ look not 



* The smell has never been successfully used as the means of impressing the imagina- 
tion with terror, pity, or any of the deeper emotions, except in this dreadful sleep-walk- 
ing of the guilty Queen, and in one parallel scene of the Greek drama, as wildly terrible 
as this. It is that passage of the Agamemnon of ^schylus, where the captive proph- 
etess Cassandra, wrapt in visionary inspirations, scents first the smell of blood, and then 
the vapors of the tomb breathing from the palace of Atrides, as ominous of his ap- 
proaching murder. These two stand alone in poetry j and Fusell, in his ledures, informs 
us, that when, in the kindred art of painting, it has been attempted to produce tragic 
cfFedt through the medium of ideas drawn from 'this squeamish sense,* even Raphael 
and Poussin have failed, and excited disgust instead of terror or compassion. — Verplanck. 



68 MACBETH. [act v. 

so pale : I tell you yet again, Banquo's burled ; he cannot come 

out on's grave. 

DoSf. Even so ? ^ 

Lady M. To bed, to bed ; there's knocking at the gate: come, 

conie, come, come, give me your hand : w^hat's done cannot be 

undone : to bed, to bed, to bed. [^Exeunt. 

Scene II. The country near Dunsinane. 

Enter Menteith, Caithness, Angus, and Lennox. 

Ment, The English pow^er is near, led on by Malcolm, 
His uncle Siward and the good MacdufF: 
Revenges burn in them \ for their dear causes 
Would to the bleeding and the grim alarm 
Excite the mortified* man. 

Ang, Near Birnam wood 

Shall we well meet them ; that way are they coming. 

Caith. Who knows if Donalbain ^e with his brother ? 

Len, For certain, sir, he is not : I have a file 
Of all the gentry : there is Siward's son. 
And many unrough youths, that even now 
Protest their first of manhood. 

Ment, What does the tyrant ? 

Caith, Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies : 
Some say he 's mad ; others, that lesser hate him. 
Do call it valiant fury : but, for certain. 
He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause 
Within the belt of rule. 

Ang. Now does he feel 

His secret murders sticking on his hands ; 
Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach ; 
Those he commands move only in command, 
Nothing in love : now does he feel his title 
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe 
Upon a dwarfish thief. 



SCENE III.] MACBETH. 69 

Ment. Who then shall blame 

His pester'd senses to recoil and start, 
When all that is within him does condemn 
Itself for being there ? 

Ca'ith. Well, march we on. 

To give obedience where 'tis truly owed : 
Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal. 
And with him pour we, in our country's purge. 
Each drop of us. 

Len. Or so much as it needs 

« To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds. 
Make we our march towards Birnam. \Exeunt. 

Scene III. Duminane. A room in the castle. 

Enter Macbeth and Attendants. 

Macb. Bring me no more reports ; let them fly all : 
^ Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane 
I cannot taint with fear. What 's the boy Malcolm ? 
Was he not born of woman ? The spirits that know 
All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus : 
' Fear not, Macbeth ; no man that's born of woman 
Shall e'er have power upon thee.' Then fly, false thanes. 
And mingle with the English epicures : 
The mind I sway by and the heart I bear 
Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear. 

Enter a Servant. 

The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon ! ^ 
Where got'st thou that goose look? 

Serv. There is ten thousand — 

Macb. Geese, villain ? 

Serv. Soldiers, sir. 

Macb. Go prick thy face and over-red thy fear. 



70 MACBETH. [act v. 

Thou lily-liver'd boy. What soldiers, patch ? ^ 
Death of thy soul ! those linen cheeks of thine 
Are counsellors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face ? 

Serv. The English force, so please you. 

Mach. Take thy face hence. \_Exit Servant. 

Seyton ! — I am sick at heart, 
When I behold — Seyton, I say ! — This push 
Will cheer me ever, or disseat me now. 
I have lived long enough : my way of life 
Is fall'n into the sear,*^ the yellow leaf, 
And that which should accompany old-age, 
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, 
I must not look to have ; but, in their stead. 
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, 
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not. 
Seyton ! 

Enter Seyton. 

Sey, What's your gracious pleasure ? 

Mach, What news more ? 

Sey, All is confirm'd, my lord, which was reported. 

Mach. I'll fight, till from my bones my flesh be hack'd. 
Give me my armour. 

Sey, 'Tis not needed yet. 

Mach. I'll put it on. 
Send out more horses, skirr * the country round ; 
Hang those that talk of fear. Give me mine armoun 

Enter Do£lor. 
How does your patient, doftor ? 

DoSf. Not so sick, my lord, 

As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies. 
That keep her from her rest. 

Macb. Cure her of that. 

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, 
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow. 



SCENE IV.] MACBETH. ^i 

Raze out the written troubles of the brain. 
And with some sweet oblivious antidote 
Cleanse the stufPd bosom of that perilous stuff 
Which weighs upon the heart ? 

Do5l, Therein the patient 

Must minister to himself. 

Mach. Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it. 
Come, put mine armour on ; give me my staff. 
Seyton, send out. Do£lor, the thanes fly from me. 
Come, sir, dispatch. If thou couldst, doftor, cast 
The water of my land, find her disease 
And purge it to a sound and pristine health, 
I would applaud thee to the very echo. 
That should applaud again. Pull 't off, I say. 
What rhubarb, cyme, or what purgative drug. 
Would scour these English hence ? Hear'st thou of them ? 

Do£i, Ay, my good lord ; your royal preparation 
Makes us hear something. 

Mach. Bring it after me. 

I will not be afraid of death and bane 
Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane. {Exeunt. 

Scene IV. Country near Birnam wood. 

Enter Malcolm, old Siward and his Son, Macduff, Men- 
TEiTH, Caithness, Angus, Lennox, Ross, and Soldiers, 
marching. 

Mai. Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand 
That chambers will be safe. 

Ment. We doubt it nothing. 

8iw. What wood is this before us ? 

Ment, The wood of Birnam. 

Mai. Let every soldier hew him down a bough, 
And bear't before him : thereby shall we shadow 



72 MACBETH [act v. 

The numbers of our host, and make discovery 
Err in report of us. 

Len. It shall be done. 

Siw, We learn no other but the confident tyrant 
Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure 
Our setting down before 't. 

MaL *Tis his main hope : 

For where there is advantage to be given, 
Both more and less have given him the revolt, 
And none serve with him but constrained things 
Whose hearts are absent too. 

Macd. Let our just censures 

Attend the true event, and put we on 
Industrious soldiership. 

Siw, The time approaches, 

That will with due decision make us know 
What we shall say we have and what we owe. 
Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate. 
But certain issue strokes must arbitrate : 
Towards which advance the war. \_Exeunt^ marching. 



Scene V. Dunsinane. Within the castle. 

Enter Macbeth, Seyton, and Soldiers. 

Mach, Hang out our banners on the outward walls j 
The cry is still 'They come :' our castle's strength 
Will laugh a siege to scorn : here let them lie 
Till famine and the ague eat them up : 
Were they not forced^ with those that should be ours, 
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard. 
And beat them backward home. \_A cry of women within. 

What is that noise ? 

Sey, It is the cry of women, my good lord. \Exit. 

Mach, I have almost forgot the taste of fears : 



SCENE v.] MACBETH, 73 

The time has been, my senses would have cool'd 
To hear a night-shriek, and my fell "^ of hair 
Would at a dismal treatise ro.use and stir 
As life were in't : I have supp'd full with horrors ; 
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts. 
Cannot once start me. 

Re-enter Seyton. 

Wherefore was that cry ? 

Sey, The queen, my lord, is dead. 

Macb, She should have died, hereafter ; 
There would have been a time for such a word. 
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and "to-morrow. 
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day. 
To the last syllable of recorded time ; 
And all our" yesterdays have lighted fools 
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle ! 
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 
And then is heard no more : it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. 
Signifying nothing. 

Enter a Messenger. 

Thou comest to use thy tongue ; thy story quickly. 

Mess, Gracious my lord, 
I should report that which I say I saw. 
But know not how to do it. 

Macb. Well, say, sir. 

Mess, As I did stand my watch upon the hill, 
I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought, 
The wood began to move. 

Macb, Liar and slave ! 

Mess, Let me endure your wrath, if't be not so: 
Within this three mile may you see it coming \ 
I say, a moving grove. 

Macb, If thou speak'st false, 

4 



74 MACBETH. [act v. 

Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive 

Till famine cling * thee : if thy speech be sooth, 

I care not if thou dost for me as much. 

I pull in^ resolution, and begin 

To doubt the equivocation of the fiend 

That lies like truth : ' Fear not, till Birnam wood 

Do come to Dunsinane ;' and now a wood 

Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out ! 

If this which he avouches does appear. 

There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here. 

I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun. 

And wish the estate o' the worH were now undone. 

Ring the alarum-bell ! Blow, wind ! come, wrack ! 

At least we '11 die with harness on our back. \_Exeunt. 

Scene VI. Dunsinane. Before the castle. 

Enter Malcolm, old Siward, Macduff, and their Army, with 

houghs, 

MaL Now near enough ; your leavy screens throw down, 
And show like those you are. You, worthy uncle, 
Shall, with my cousin, your right noble son. 
Lead our first battle : worthy MacdufF and we 
Shall take upon 's what else remains to do, 
According to our order. 

Siw, Fare you well. 

Do we but find the tyrant's power to-night. 
Let us be beaten, if we cannot fight. 

Macd, Make all our trumpets speak ; give them all breath. 
Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death. \Exeunt. 

^ Monck Mason gives an illustration from Fletcher, which explains the use of ' pull in :* 

* All my spirits, 
As if they had heard my passing bell go for me, 
Full in their powers and give me up, to destiny.* 



SCENE vii.] MACBETH. 75 

Scene VII. Another part of the field. 

Alarums. Enter Macbeth. 

Macb. They have tied me to a stake ; I cannot fly, 
But bear-like I must fight the course. What's he 
That was not born of woman ? Such a one 
Am I to fear, or none. 

Enter young Siward. 

To. Siw. What is thy name ? 

Macb. Thou 'It be afraid to hear it. 

To. Siw, No ; though thou call'st thyself a hotter name 
Than any is in hell. 

Macb. My name's Macbeth. 

To. Siw. The devil himself could not pronounce a title 
More hateful to mine ear. 

Macb. No, nor more fearful. 

To. Siw. Thou liest, abhorred tyrant ; with mv sword 
I '11 prove the lie thou speak'st. 

[ l^hey fight ^ and young Siward is slain 

Macb. Thou wast born of woman. 

But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn, 
Brandish'd by man that 's of a woman born. J[£xit. 

Alarums. Enter Macduff. 

Macd. That way the noise is. Tyrant, show thy face ! 
If thou be'st slain and with no stroke of mine, 
My wife and children's ghosts will haunt me still. 
I cannot strike at wretched kerns * whose arms 
Are hired to bear their staves : either thou, Macbeth, 
Or else my sword, with an unbatter'd edge, 
I sheathe again undeeded. There thou shouldst be -, 
By this great clatter, one of greatest note 
Seems bruited i"^* let me find him, fortune ! 
And more I beg not. \^Exit. Alarun, 



76 MACBETH. [act v. 

Scene VIII. Another part of the field. 

Enter Malcolm and old Siward. 

Siw. This way, my lord ; the castle's gently rendered : 
The tyrant's people on both sides do fight ; 
The noble thanes do bravely in the war ; 
The day almost itself professes yours, 
And little is to do. 

Mai. We have met with foes 

That strike beside us. 

Siw. Enter, sir, the castle. \ Exeunt. Alarum. 

Enter Macbeth. 

Mach. Why should I play the Roman fool, and die 
On mine own sword ? whiles I see lives, the gashes 
Do better upon them. 

Enter Macduff. 

Macd. Turn, hell-hound, turn ! 

Mach. Of all men else I have avoided thee : 
But get thee back ; my soul is too much charged 
With blood of thine already. 

Macd. I have no words: 

My voice is in my sword, thou bloodier villain 
Than terms can give thee out ! [^They fight. 

Mach. Thou losest labour : 

As easy mayst thou the intrenchant '^ air 
With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed : 
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests ; 
I bear a charmed life, which must not yield 
To one of woman born. 

Macd. Despair thy charm, 

And let the angel whom thou still hast served 
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb 
Untimely ripp'd. 

Mach. Accursed be that tongue that tells me so, 



SCENE VIII.] MACBETH, jf 

For it hath cow'd my better part of man ! 

And be these juggling fiends no more believed. 

That palter with us in a double sense ; 

That keep the word of promise to our ear, 

And break it to our hope. I'll not fight with thee. 

Macd, Then yield thee, coward, 
And live to be the show and gaze ^ o' the time : 
We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are. 
Painted upon a pole, and underwrit, 
' Here may you see the tyrant.' 

Mach, I will not yield. 

To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet. 
And to be baited with the rabble's curse. 
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, 
And thou opposed, being of no woman born. 
Yet I will try the last : lay on, Macduff^; 
And damn'd be him that first cries ' Hold, enough !' 

[^Alarums. They fight ^ Macbeth is slain. 

Retreat. Flourish, Re-enter.^ with drum and colours Malcolm, 
old SiWARD, Ross, the other Thanes, and Soldiers. 

Macd. {To Malcolm.'] Hail, King of Scotland ! 
All. , Hail, King of Scotland' 

\_Flourish. The curtain falls. 



GLOSSARY. 



Affcered, assessed, confirmed. 

Aroint^ get thee gone. 

Augur y augury, 

Blood-bolteredy smeared with blood. 

Bruit, to noise abroad, 

Chandroriy entrails. 

Chucky chicken, a term of endearment. 

Clingy to starve. 

Coign, projeding corner-stone. 

ConnjincCy to conquer, subdue. 

Cracky a loud noise, clap, * Crack of doom,' 
dissolution of nature. 

Deftly y dexterously. 

Dudgeony the handle of a dagger. 

Ecstacyy alienation of mind. 

Eminence, exhalted station. 

Enkindle, to make keen. 

Eterncy eternal. 

Fantastical^ imaginary, creatures of fantasy. 

Fanjoury countenance. 

Fce-griefy a grief held, as it were, in fee- 
simple, or the peculiar property of him 
who possesses it. 

Felly the hide, scalp. 

FiUy to defile. 

Flaiv^ Netaphy sudden emotion, or the 
cause of it. 

For, on account of, because of. 

Forbid^ accursed, outlawed. 

Forcedy strengthened. 

Friend, to befriend. 

Gallozuglass, the irregular infantry of 



Ireland, and the Highlands of Scot- 
land. 

GerminSy sprouting seeds. 

Ga%e, an objedl of wonder. 

God'^ild, God yield^ or reward, a term of 
thanks. 

Gouty a drop. 

Graymalkiuy a common name of old for a cat. 

Gulfy the throat. 

Hermity a beadsman, one bound to pray for 
another. 

Husbandry^ frugality. 

ImpresSy to compel to serve. 

Incarnadine, to dye red. 

Insane^ that which causes insanity. 

Intermission, pause, delay. 

Intrenchant, not capable of being cut. 

In'vention, imagination. 

Jutty, a projeftion. 

Kern, the rude foot soldiers of the Irish. 

Knoiv, to acknowledge. 

Latch, to catch. 

Limbec, an alembic, a still. 

Limitedy appointed. 

Loony a low, contemptible fellow. 

Maggot-pie y a magpie, a pie which feeds on 
maggots. 

Memori-zey to cause to be remembeied. 

Mctaphysicaly supernatural. 

Alcdcrn, common, commonplace. 

Mortal, murderous i 

Mortified, ascetic. 



8o 



GLOSS ART. 



Napkin, a handkerchief. 

Old, a. cant term for great, as we say fine, 

or pretty. 
Oive, to own. 
Paddock, a toad. 
Pall, to wrap as with a pall. 
Patch, rascal. 
Pretence, design. 
Pretend, to intend. 
Prophesy, to utter strange or important 

things, to announce solemnly. 
^luarry, game|^a heap of dead game. 
I^cll, murder. 

Rapt, transported with emotion. 
Ra'vin, to devour. 
Raivness, unprovided state. 
Ronyon, 2l term of contempt applied to a 

woman. 



Round, a diadem. 

Scotch, to bruise, or cut slightly. 

Sear, scorched, withered. 

Seated, fixed, confirmed. 

Seeling, closing, blinding. 

Shards, the wing cases of beetles. 

Shoughs, shaggy dogs. 

Sightless, invisible. 

Single, feeble, 

Skirr, to scour. 

Slea've, floss-silk. 

Sorriest, most sorrowful. 

State, a canopied chair. 

Suggestion, temptation, enticement. 

Surcease, cessation, end. 

To, compared to, in comparison with. 

Utterance, extremity. 



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